The Captive
by Akemi Homura-san
Summary: Darth Revan didn't lose his memories when Malak betrayed him. Clinging to life, he is rescued by Bastila Shan, and the Jedi Council decides that he must be redeemed. Unable or unwilling to wipe away his intact memories, they turn to Bastila Shan, who delves deeply into the story of a Mandalorian boy named Kylo Wren and the love he lost, gaining a terrifying insight into his fall.
1. Chapter 00

The bridge of the _Dominator _was not especially well-lit; not that it needed to be, since the bridge crew was in the lit lower portion of the chamber, with a number of Dark Jedi spaced out around the circumference of the room. Near the transparisteel that constituted the window out to the skirmish in progress stood a Twi'lek, garbed in military fatigues, with a cylindrical weapon at her side. Well-known for performing under pressure, she coolly gave orders out that were followed to the letter, and despite the disadvantage at which the _Dominator _and its escort found themselves, it appeared as though the battle would be a victory for the flagship of the Infinite Fleet of the Sith Empire.

Of course, she was not as calm as she appeared, such that she nearly sighed in relief as a figure walked through the automatic doors onto the bridge. This figure was swathed in black robes and strange armour, with a long cape and a hood atop its masked head, and everyone on the bridge stopped and stood at attention as he passed by—for the figure was undoubtedly that of a man. The Dark Jedi were the most affected, as they stiffened as he walked past, a literal maelstrom in the Force to them, possessing power nigh-incalculable. Two cylinders hung at his waist, swaying slightly and then stilling as he came to a stop behind the Twi'lek.

"Status report," he said conversationally, his voice warped and distorted through the filter of the vocabulator.

"The _Leviathan _is pinned down. Our escort is being cut to ribbons, and we are tracking a single ship on its way towards us," she replied.

"Strengthen our shields facing the _Leviathan, _and let that ship land. Transport class, yes?"

She nodded.

"Very well. Everyone save the Dark Jedi out. Execute Protocol Twelve," the man said.

The Twi'lek looked back at him with alarm, her lekku whipping through the controlled air of the bridge. "But, my lord—!"

"Worry not, my Shadow Hand. All of this is going according to plan."

She took a moment to compose herself, and bowed stiffly. "Yes, my lord."

As the bridge crew and the Shadow Hand made for the exits, and from then to the ventilation shafts, the man and his subordinate Force users stood stock still as the masked man beheld the infinite black expanse of the galaxy before him for what was to be the last time in what he fully expected to be a long while.

* * *

The party of six Jedi, all masters and knights save for one, found the corridors of Darth Revan's flagship unnervingly empty, as if the entire vessel had been vacated only recently, for there were still a number of droids going about their duties. Bastila Shan tightened her grip on her yellow double-bladed lightsaber as the unmitigated power of the Dark Side of the Force flowed over her, seeking purchase on even the slightest hint of passion or fear; she recited the Jedi Code over and over again as a mantra to calm her mind and force the Dark Side to retreat.

Still, it was almost overwhelming to the Padawan; there were certainly places corrupted by the Dark Side near the Jedi Enclave on Dantooine, but never to this extent. Here, waves of the Dark Side pulsed throughout the vessel, choking and cloying with the sheer viscosity and virulence of the befouled energy. And the source of it was…

"He's on the bridge," Bastila burst out.

The leader of the party, Master Saresh, nodded at her information. She might not be very well-liked or popular amongst the Jedi Order, but they at least acknowledged her proficiency and aptitude. "To the bridge," the Twi'lek ordered, and the party quickly made their way to the top deck of the ship, where the bridge of the vessel was located. Soon enough, the entire party knew that they were headed in the correct direction, for each step was like taking a step further into the mire and murk that was the Dark Side; and as they drew closer, the Force signatures became more diverse. There seemed to be eleven Dark Jedi on the bridge, and a single vortex of dark energy nearly engulfing them all, dwarfing their presence in the Force to the point that, upon entering, it had seemed like a single point of origin for the black energies that raced in waves throughout the durasteel hallways of the massive ship.

Before Bastila knew it, they were at the door beyond which laid the bridge, the nerve center of the vessel, where the former Jedi, and now Lord of the Sith, was located. She took a deep breath in as her fellows ignited their lightsabers with a _snap-hiss_, and forced herself to focus through the suffocating pall that was the Dark Side.

The doors sprung open, and immediately they were fighting. Flashes of red and green and blue blinded her, the cacophony of clashing blades of plasma seeming almost deafening. She ignited her own weapon, searching around for a Dark Jedi that wasn't already engaged with her fellows. She didn't have to search far; within moments, she blocked an overhead strike by an overzealous Dark Jedi, his face deteriorating with his contact with the Dark Side—skin pale, translucent, sickly and flaking—and she noticed with quite queer timing why, precisely, the Dark Jedi tended to wear masks to cover up their decaying faces.

Nevertheless, the Dark Jedi whom she engaged was not particularly a challenge; he had but one lightsaber, the wielding of which he was competent, but hardly proficient, and she had her own weapon at which, while not proficient, her skill level at least surpassed his. In one flurry, his main hand was removed, and he was split in twain at the waist.

Bastila looked about, and watched as the last of the Dark Jedi fell, leaving only the one they came for to fight. Bastila stepped forward and said with far more confidence than she perhaps had any right to feel, "You cannot win, Revan!"

The figure straightened, turned on his heel and faced the Jedi. One of Darth Revan's famed two lightsabers flew into his hand, and its red plasma blade ignited with a sound like acid on metal. Wordlessly, with an oppressive sort of silence, he swung it about and took the stance of the Juyo Form, which made Bastila take an instinctive step back.

One of the Jedi Guardians, a Togruta, lost his patience and charged forth with a battle cry that was as much bravery as it was abject terror, blue lightsaber at the ready. In a flash of motion, Darth Revan batted the blow aside and sliced the Togruta—Seth, Bastila remembered his name was—cleanly in half, from shoulder to hip.

This all occurred in the space of two seconds.

Master Saresh looked on in astonishment, before his face grew stony and he yelled, "Attack!"

All four of the others charged, following the Twi'lek Jedi Consular and the blade of his green lightsaber. In a blur of motion so fast that, if not for the evidence of her own senses, she would have sworn that the Sith Lord had augmented his speed with the Force, he ducked under Master Saresh's strike, batted away another Guardian's lightsaber with two cuts, followed by a decapitation. Saresh struck at his back, and Revan's red lightsaber blocked it, followed by a twirl and two opposite diagonal cuts that carved a massive 'X' across Master Saresh's chest, and quickly he completed the turn with a duck low that slashed another Jedi's legs off at the knees. The last one of them struck again and again and again, and in a move she had never seen anyone, Jedi or otherwise, even attempt, let alone succeed at, he batted that Jedi's attack away, using the red lightsaber to hold the blade at bay, and used the Force to bring his other lightsaber into his off-hand, igniting it with the same unnerving hiss and slashing the Jedi in half with the violet blade of his left hand's saber.

Slowly, he stalked towards Bastila, his lightsabers ignited but at his sides. As he walked past the now legless Jedi, he shoved his violet saber into the knight's face, killing him instantly and cutting off his pained screaming with a gurgle, followed by the sickening scent of burnt and boiling flesh. Bastila dropped down into a defensive stance, looking directly into the Dark Lord of the Sith's famous Mandalorian mask, and attempted without success to stop trembling. "Bastila Shan," the Sith Lord's voice drawled, distorted by the vocabulator through which he spoke. "Welcome to my parlour. I..."

The ship rocked, causing Bastila to stumble and interrupting Revan. Taking advantage of this, she ran forth with a wordless cry and struck with a flurry while the Sith Lord looked out at the battle in progress. The red lightsaber blocked each of her attacks while Revan's attention was distracted, but she managed to get off a Force push, throwing him into the transparisteel of the viewing port. He struck his head, and fell to the ground. Standing up, he kept Bastila off of him by conducting crackling purple lightning at her, which she tried her best to block with her lightsaber. It set her back a few steps with the pure force behind it, but she had gotten Darth Revan onto his back foot.

That changed a moment later as Revan somehow executed a Force-assisted jump, bringing both lightsabers down on her position, forcing her to roll away. She kept giving ground as the constant flurry of offence continued to push her further and further back. She had been warned, but the warnings the likes of Master Vrook gave her before she embarked on this mission did not do Revan's talents justice. She had never seen a Jedi fight like this—constant offence that was actually flowing, like a dance or a whirlwind, completely dispassionate and yet entirely unpredictable.

Her reverie was shattered as Revan planted a boot in her midsection, and the kick, its impact augmented with the Force, sent her flying into the wall. Biting back a cry of pain, she decided to turn the tables on him by augmenting her speed and rushing back at him, her double-bladed lightsaber spinning like a whirligig as she desperately attempted to land a hit on him—a hit of any nature, even a graze. But unlike the haphazard motions she had been told to expect from a practitioner of the Juyo Form, there was not a single opening in his defence.

Nevertheless, she spun faster and faster, until, when the ship rocked once more from heavy turbolaser fire, she managed to land a cut—a graze, more like—across his mask.

He cried out in surprise, and when he stopped staggering and looked up at her, her blood went cold as the glowing yellow eye within glared out at her.

Paralysed in mortal terror, she could only shake her head as Darth Revan stalked towards her—

—only for him to be blown across the room as a fighter smashed into the bridge.

Shocked and horrified as the force field came on to maintain the pressure of the bridge, she approached the Sith Lord, noting as he held his—now extinguished—lightsabers in a death grip, and then noticing that Darth Revan, while not dead, was well and truly unconscious, and moreover, losing blood fast. Impulsively, she rushed over to him, and using the powers of the Light Side of the Force, she did her best to stabilise him. Then, she picked him up and carried his body, which, while heavy, was not quite as heavy as she had expected—though she still required assistance from the Force—and ran through the ship for the transport vessel that had brought her now-dead comrades and her onto Darth Revan's now-crashing flagship.

In the nick of time, she managed to pull away from the vessel's hangar, such that by the time the ship's shields gave out entirely, she was aboard the Republic capital ship that was meant to bear them forth.

With an explosion that rocked the cosmos, the _Dominator _was no more.

* * *

_One Month Later… _

"_What?!_" Bastila cried, open-mouthed in astonishment.

"Awakened, Revan has. Redeem him, we can. Redeem him, we _must,_" Master Vandar explained.

"But…"

"Juhani attempted to make contact with him, and she ended up in a coma submerged in a kolto tank. We have tried every method we know of, save cutting him off from the Force entirely, to stifle his power, and every method has failed," Master Vrook continued.

"However, we have reason to believe that contact with you, who saved his life, may well be palatable to him. And perhaps you can break his silence, as Juhani failed to do," Master Zhar finished. "Please, Bastila. You are our last hope to get through to him."

"I have not the skill…"

"Precisely why it must be you, that is," Vandar remarked. "Distrust us, he does. Hate us, even. But not you."

"Look, Bastila," Zhar interjected before Vrook could begin chastising her for questioning the orders of the Jedi Council. "We know we ask much of you, but…there exists as well a connection between you two—a connection in the Force. We have reason to believe that that was formed as you saved his life. Out of all the Jedi, we have come to the conclusion that only _you _have the ability to turn him back to the Path of Light, and to get him to stand down his forces, ending this senseless war."

"I… Fine," Bastila sighed. "I concede to the wisdom of the Council."

"Thanks you, the Council does," replied Master Vandar with something akin to relief in his voice. "As does the rest of the galaxy. Perhaps peace, there shall finally be."

Bastila bowed stiffly and left the chamber. Once the doors closed behind her, however, she slumped with a sigh against the wall. Taking a moment to compose herself, she proceeded down to the prisoner cells.

The name 'cells' was inaccurate; it was much more appropriate to call it 'cell,' singular. It was a containment unit equipped with a meditation chamber, adequate facilities for necessities, and a small degree of space for motion. All told, it was a cube half the size in surface area as the Enclave, and about three metres in height—an adequate size for any humanoid prisoner or creature of comparable size. Bastila descended, and was immediately struck by how dark it was. The only light in the chamber came from the cell, which was stark and white and sterile—which was immediately at odds with the chamber's sole occupant, who stood in the precise centre of the room with his back to the entrance, his hands clasped behind him.

"A visitor?" came a voice, deep and smooth and quiet like a durasteel knife slowly leaving the sheath. "And not just _any_ visitor, either—Bastila Shan, the Knight Victorious. Come to gloat over your victory, are you? Like every other Jedi who believes that because I'm captive, I'm harmless? I immediately disavowed the Cathar of that notion because I detest it. Grisly work, warping her mind like that, but it had to be done." He sighed, and Bastila noticed that she had frozen in mid-step the moment he had begun to speak. "My dear, this will be a terribly dull conversation if I am the only one speaking. I may be acutely narcissistic, but not even _I _like the sound of my own voice _that _much."

"I'm…no knight. Simply a Padawan," Bastila haltingly corrected him.

"Ah, I see," he said sagely, nodding. "The Council still fears power. How…_quaint._"

"The Council is wise to do so," Bastila replied before she could stop herself. "Power leads to the Dark Side. You of all people should be cognizant of _that._"

He chuckled, and it was a mirthless, grating sound—condescending, in a way. "Peace is a lie. There is only passion. Through passion, I gain strength. Through strength, I gain power. Through power, I gain victory. Through victory, my chains are broken. The Force shall set me free." He chuckled again, and Bastila winced at the horror of it. "Irony aside, do you know what that is, _child?_"

"I am no child."

"Continue to introduce yourself as a child, and I shall continue to call you such," Revan responded coolly. "Prove yourself worthy of adulthood, and I shall treat you as such."

"And yet you were beaten by one you term a child," Bastila murmured.

"Only a child would have saved my life back on the _Dominator,_" the former Jedi replied.

"No one deserves to die, no matter what their crimes," Bastila insisted.

"A child's sentiment," Revan remarked. "Really, you could have saved yourself so much in the way of resources had you left me to die on that ship."

"You…wished for me to take your life?"

He laughed bitterly. "Child, I am a _Mandalorian. _My life is no great thing. But no, I _wished _not for you to kill me—I _wished _for you to act with decorum befitting a warrior."

Bastila was stunned into silence. Revan, the man who had led the Republic to victory against Mandalore the Ultimate…_was a Mandalorian himself?!_ Finally, she managed to eke out, "I…was unaware you were Mandalorian."

He sighed with a lift and a drop of his shoulders. "Yes, I suppose there is much of my history of which you are unaware." He chuckled bitterly once again. "Go, then, Bastila Shan. This is no place for a child to be lurking about where even angels fear to tread."

Despite herself, Bastila found that she had had quite enough of being talked down to that day. "Oh, really? Who is the true child here—me, or the man who refuses to show his face?"

The captive Dark Lord of the Sith tensed. "You cut my face off, remember? And then allowed your foolish Jedi _Masters _take it from me while I was unconscious?"

Bastila cocked a brow in confusion. "Your face? Your face was unharmed—"

"_No, _foolish child," he spat, his voice no longer smooth or serpentine or sibilant, but cracking like a slavemaster's whip. "Not this...misshapen lump of flesh. It is no more my face than _you_ are a Twi'lek—though you would undoubtedly be far nicer to look upon were that the case."

Bastila did her best to ignore that rather perplexing comment. "What was destroyed was a mask—"

"Yes, my face," he replied impatiently. "I swore an oath long ago that until justice was done, the mask would be as my face. I intend to hold to that vow."

Comprehension dawned on Bastila, memories of newsreels and holovids from the Mandalorian Wars flashing through her mind. In spite of herself—in spite of the Jedi teachings and everything they stood for—she found herself becoming…_angry._ "_That _oath?" she scoffed. "The one you swore as a _publicity stunt?!_"

The tension in Revan's form increased. "I fail to grasp the meaning of your emphasis."

"What about the oath you swore as a Jedi Knight? The oath the Jedi Code embodies and represents—the one _you _abandoned?"

"I have taken no oath that I have betrayed or abandoned, foolish child. It was instead the Jedi themselves who have broken their oaths to uphold peace and to protect the innocent people of the Republic," he replied, his tone cold as the surface of Hoth.

"What of the people who were _slaughtered _by your hand—for the sake of your _crusade_ against your own people? Who were _massacred _by your regime? Who were crushed beneath the weight of your tyranny?" Bastila spat, her emotions growing increasingly beyond her control. "Entire planets laid to waste and wiped clean of life?! What makes your oath to one _insignificant _Mandalorian so much more—"

Bastila grabbed at her throat. Revan had turned to her with his gauntleted hand held up, using the Force to choke her as his luminescent yellowish eyes glowed with fury in the shadows of his hood. "You know _nothing _of what you speak, you _ignorant, foolish, self-important Jedi,_" he said coldly, every syllable pronounced and enunciated with agonising clarity. Bastila clawed at her neck, even drawing blood, as darkness closed in around her. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity of being rendered entirely unable to breathe, Revan allowed her to drop to the ground in a heap as she gasped for air—air which crackled and thickened with the presence of the Dark Side, rolling off of Revan in immense waves—and watched as Revan once more turned his back on her, clasping his hands behind his back. "Now, leave. Begone from my sight before I decide to rid the galaxy of your sanctimonious idiocy."

Desperate to make progress, she grasped desperately at the name being whispered into her ear by the ambient darkness of the chamber. At last, it came to her lips: "...Kylo…"

He turned in a fashion that could almost be described as ponderous, regarding her with his horrible yellow eyes, marks of his servitude to all that was evil and perverse and _wrong _in the galaxy. "_What _did you call me?"

"Kylo…Wren…" Bastila managed with some degree of difficulty. "That is your name, right? Your real one?"

"_Was,_" the former Jedi corrected. "No one has called me that name in a very, _very _long time."

"You claim that I know nothing of you," Bastila gasped. "Then _teach me._"

His eyes, once awash with seething fury, now sparkled with malicious amusement. "You think uttering the name of a dead man will help you to understand the motives of one who yet lives?"

"I do not believe him to be nearly so dead as you say," she replied.

He sighed, and it was at once long-suffering and nostalgic. "You don't intend to leave me be until you get your way, do you, Bastila Shan?" He chuckled sadly, muttering something that sounded like, "Just like her…"

"You called me by my name…?"

"You proved yourself worthy of it," the man once known as Kylo Wren returned. "Return tomorrow, and I shall begin to tell you of what led to this point. I fear the famed Mandalorian regeneration works rather more slowly for those who do not breed true, and I find my energy has fled me." He turned his back on her once more, arms once more clasped behind his back. "Run along, Bastila. Run along and tell your Jedi Masters that I shall speak—but only to you."

Bastila, at last composed once more, nodded stiffly. "Very well, then. I shall return tomorrow at midmorning. Will that be acceptable?"

"Quite," Revan consented.

"Good." She turned on her heel and walked back to the stairs, only to stop on the first step up. "Peace is _not _a lie, Revan."

He chuckled darkly. "Return tomorrow and listen to my tale, and perhaps I may come to believe you if still you believe that, Bastila Shan."

Once the door sealed behind Bastila, she allowed herself to collapse against the nearby wall and contemplate how very close she had just come to her own death. She was ready to go back into the Council chamber and tell them what had happened, to say that she was not equipped to handle the Sith Lord imprisoned below the Enclave; in fact, she stood up to go do precisely that, until a realisation hit her like a turbolaser shot—

—but she _did._

He had talked to her, hadn't he? Juhani, who was fully a Knight, had not gotten half as far, and was still comatose from the attempt, was she not? And for as close as Bastila had come to death, she was still in possession of her faculties, was she not? Moreover, Sith were not precisely known for hesitating to kill someone, now were they? She may be the only Jedi on the planet—the only Jedi in the _galaxy, _even—to have the ability to talk to Darth Revan and come out of the event _alive, _even _without _the invitation he had extended to her to return the next day. Despite her misgivings, she knew that the Council would latch onto and focus on what she had accomplished as opposed to what might have been.

Besides, this way, she could learn what had turned him to the Dark Side, and help him see it from the perspective of a proper Jedi—perhaps the only way he could be redeemed. Indeed, it could well be said that now, she had a _duty _to uphold: to bring the most notorious wayward Jedi since the days of Naga Sadow and Ajunta Pall back into the fold—

—back to the Light.

Bastila swore softly, every curse and foul oath of which she knew. But she was aware that she had no choice. Besides, now that Master Zhar had mentioned it, she _did _feel the tether that tied him to her in the Force—the tether that might well drag her down to the Dark Side if she did not use it to guide him back to the Light. She didn't like the path that had begun to lay its way out before her—in fact, she _despised_ it—but the Force, with its endless possibilities, seemed to tie her ever tighter to the inevitability of the road upon which she had no choice but to tread. It would not be an easy road, undoubtedly, but it was _her _road, _her _trial that the Force had set for her, and thus, she had no choice but to rise to the challenge.

"Why me?"

* * *

Back down in the cell, Revan shook his head as he sighed. The way she had said the name he had once had—the name with which he had been born—had truly thrown him off guard, and the fire he had seen in her eyes, beyond the righteous indignation it seemed every two-bit Jedi (which was, in his estimation, a very large list) these days seemed to possess, beyond the sense of entitlement he had once seen in his own eyes and _despised, _reminded him so very much of Meetra that it was, in a way, physically painful, and made him unable to muster the resolve to simply _twist_ his hand and snap her pretty little neck. Unlike Alek, however, he did not despise such displays of 'weakness,' knowing that such 'weaknesses' were what kept him from succumbing to the corrupting influence of the Dark Side as his treacherous apprentice had. Instead, he studied his weaknesses, tried to find their roots and in so doing come to understand them as integrally as he understood the Resol'nare—and though he did not always reach the root of that which stayed his hand, he still found the process to be instrumental towards remaining himself, and not a monster like Vitiate had become.

Once he was certain no one would be down to visit him, he allowed his posture to slump, steadying himself on the fifteen centimetres of transparisteel that separated him from the Enclave. It would be so very simple to destroy his cage and walk abroad once more, but he had not lied to Bastila; the wounds he had sustained aboard the _Dominator _were extensive, and his half-Mandalorian physiology would need time to heal them fully; add to that the fact that using the Force while trying to repair his wounds _and _resist the pull towards the more bestial depths of the Dark Side put tremendous strain on his body and mind, and he was utterly spent.

_How humiliating, _he thought as he just barely made it to the meditation chamber, fully and entirely cognizant of the fact that he had nearly torn his wounds open with that little stunt. _To have lost control of myself in such a manner—at this rate, I'll rage myself into an early grave. And that… That would be a stupid death._

With a tremendous exertion of force of will, he managed to get himself into the chamber and take the half-lotus position as the upper half of the chamber closed down around him, blocking out all sound and extraneous light, leaving him in complete darkness as his torments filled the negative space around him with visions of the many horrors to which he had borne witness—the horrors he had been powerless to stop; and through all of this, one mantra kept him sane as his mind repeated it over and over and over again, until that became the core of his existence, the anchor which kept his many and myriad torments from consuming him entirely, twisting him and warping him until there was nothing left but a monster fuelled by rage and pain and loss beyond anything his younger self, the boy named Kylo of the Mandalorian clan Wren, could have possibly even hoped to comprehend.

_Peace is a lie; there is only Passion._

_Through Passion, I gain Strength._

_Through Strength, I gain Power._

_Through Power, I gain Victory._

_Through Victory, my chains are broken._

_The Force shall set me free._

_**To be continued…**_


	2. Chapter 01

The next day, Bastila awoke to glare at her chronometre. She _desperately _wanted this day not to come—the day when she would begin the nigh-insurmountable task of understanding what had taken a powerful, if rebellious Jedi Knight, and twisted him and contorted him into a man whom many believed to be the embodiment of evil. Still, it was her duty to bring him back into the fold of the Jedi so that the galaxy might at last know peace, and so with a groan, she slipped out of bed and went to clothe herself. As she swept her hair back, she caught sight of a mark of some sort. Upon closer inspection, she found it to be a series of contusions at her throat—a reminder that the man who she was to visit, while captive, was _far _from powerless.

Making a note to step carefully, she clipped her double-bladed lightsaber onto her belt as the last piece before she could step forth and walk abroad with any degree of comfort. Her nerves robbing her of the vast majority of her appetite, she was able to force down a light meal before descending. As she walked towards the stairs, she came across a pair of Jedi Knights holding a tray of food, standing paralysed before the door and talking in hushed tones. She assumed they were discussing Juhani's fate upon attempting to talk to the captive Sith Lord, stalling for time before they would be forced to go down and give him his sustenance—the Jedi did not believe in cruelty.

Bastila huffed in frustration and stalked forth. "_I _will handle it," she snapped at the two gossiping Jedi. They looked to her with a mixture of relief and disbelief evident on their faces. "I have to go down anyways. Might as well bring him his food since you two are so very terrified by his mere presence."

Missing or ignoring the sharpness of her tone, they bowed and thanked her profusely as they placed the tray in her hands and walked away as quickly as they could without breaking into a dead sprint. Bastila sighed at her rotten luck before reminding herself that there is no chance or coincidence—only the Force.

Like the day before, she stepped very carefully down to the lower level, but saw the cell empty of Revan. She began to panic until she saw that the meditation chamber was closed, and supposed that Revan must have felt the need to meditate. She found this strange because Dantooine was largely bereft of the Dark Side, but shrugged as she came closer.

As she approached the cell, sure enough the white egg-shaped chamber began to open, venting its pressurised atmosphere in an audible and substantial rush of air, and Revan turned to regard her, and while she still only saw his glowing yellow eyes beneath the shadow of his hood, already she felt much less looked down upon than the previous day, when Revan refused to do so much as to turn and face her until she had angered him almost to the point of him killing her. "Ah, Bastila," he addressed smoothly.

"I brought food," she said so as to break the ice.

Revan nodded. "I can see that. Please, simply put it on the floor. There is a port that opens so that I may receive my meals. That shall be a sufficient method of conveyance."

Bastila did as bidden and then stepped back into the shadows, watching as a small port, far too small for even a youngling to crawl through, opened up; he did not move, and yet the tray flew through the slot and into the cell. The port snapped shut after that, but he made no move toward the food, and instead levitated it and manipulated it through the Force.

"Bastila, I noticed that there were two others—full Jedi Knights—who were about to enter this area and bring me the food instead of you," Revan began conversationally as the tea prepared itself. "You relieved them of that duty. I would like to understand _why._"

Bastila shrugged. "Does it matter?"

"It matters quite a bit more than you seem to think it does," Revan replied, and Bastila could not help but feel like she had just been reprimanded. "The desire to comprehend, after all, is the mark of adulthood. So, I repeat: _Why _did you relieve them of that duty?"

Bastila considered that as Revan sipped the steaming tea cup with the Force. "They were afraid to do so," she answered.

"And so you feel that they deserved to be free of that fear?" he asked, and though his tone was perfectly neutral, Bastila could not help but feel as though he was disbelieving. "Do you believe their fear to be unwarranted, then?"

Bastila shook her head. "They feared that entrance would consign them to the fate that Juhani suffered at your hands."

"And yet you know that Juhani only suffered that fate because she believed me to be harmless," Revan countered. "You could have told them that. Why didn't you?"

"Because I don't believe you were telling the truth," Bastila said without thinking.

Revan cocked his head in an almost disturbingly avian fashion. "You forget that I am at least as aware of our bond as you are," he replied. "You _know _that I wasn't lying, just as I know that you _are._"

Bastila looked up at him in irritation. "What is the point of this?!" she demanded.

"To get you to _think,_" Revan responded, his voice once again cracking through the air like a slavemaster's whip. "You can never hope to understand another if you do not at least attempt to understand yourself. A little introspection goes a long way, Bastila."

Bastila huffed, sufficiently chastised. "Very well. I did it because…"

"You did it because you believed that if you came bearing food, not only would it break the ice between us, but you would get the chance to see my face," Revan interrupted. "I gave you the answer this time. Do not expect me to do so a second time. And if you _ever _lie to me again, you _will_ die. Do you understand?"

Bastila nodded mutely.

"Good. Now," he said as the now empty tea cup alighted gracefully upon its proper saucer. "I said that I was going to tell you of my life, did I not? Or have I spent the entire night contemplating how to convey it in a way that you might have a chance of comprehending it for naught?"

"Yes, you did," Bastila sighed, sitting in half-lotus before the well-lit cell.

"Very well, then. I shall start at the beginning."

* * *

_I was born on the planet Ziost some twenty-seven years ago, when the ship upon which my pregnant mother travelled had to make an emergency stop at the planet. She went into labour sixteen hours after the Basilisks hit the ground and established a planetside perimetre that was sufficiently defensible. My father was not present amongst the passengers, as he was not a born Mandalorian. My mother, however, was several generations pureblood of Mandalore, of the Wren clan. I do not remember her name._

_ My first memory was of my mother coming home. She was an avid advocate of the Resol'nare, after all—the six pillars of Mandalorian society—and so always wore her _beskar'kandar _whenever she was to be seen in public. To this day, one of my most prominent memories of her are of her helmet, and not the face beneath._

_ The clearest memory I have is of when Master Kreia visited our ship while we were resupplying over Kashyyyk, saying that she sensed a Force-sensitive in our midst. Now, one must first understand that Mandalorians have an inherent distrust of the Jedi, and from that comes a distrust for most Force-sensitives. It did not take long for her to find me—a small half-Mandalorian boy, the first life-form born on Ziost since the original Sith abandoned it. Master Kreia once related to me that I was a brilliant light in the midst of the crowd of Mandalorian warriors. I didn't really believe her—I was always above average in terms of Force sensitivity, but wielding the Light Side always felt…off… Like I was doing something dreadfully wrong. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Why don't we begin with that day? Let's see…_

* * *

"Kylo! _Kylo!_" My eyes opened slowly, and blinked blearily to clear my vision, looking up at the ceiling of the _Kandosii-_class ship that the Wren clan had selected to attack Kashyyyk in hopes of doing battle with the famously vicious warriors of the Wookiee race. Groaning, I rolled over and onto the cold floor of the Mandalorian ship with a grunt on impact.

Looking up, I stared into the mask of my mother, who _really _should have been planetside by now. "Buir?" I asked in confusion.

"Kylo, verd'ika, ogir…"

* * *

"Wait, stop, please," said Bastila, pleading.

Revan cocked his head, seeming less annoyed than intrigued by this interjection. "Yes? Is there a problem?"

"I don't understand what you're saying," Bastila replied.

He was quiet, and mild surprise radiated from him as a gentle aura. "You never learned to speak Mando'a, did you?" He sighed. "So little respect for ancient cultures these days… Though, this could well be argued to be my fault…" He chuckled, shaking his head. "Very well. Galactic Basic, then."

* * *

"Kylo, little soldier, there is a Jedi here," my mother told me in a loud whisper. "She says she is here to see you."

"What?" I asked, still half-asleep. "Why would a Jedi…"

"I don't know," she replied quickly, looking back over her shoulder. Mother was always a stoic woman, and so to see her so nervous… To call it 'unsettling' would be an understatement, I think. "Just get up and come out. We haven't got long—the basilisks are planetside, and this Jedi… Even Mand'alor himself does not keep her waiting."

Appropriately chastised and sufficiently terrified, I quickly got up and donned my clothes as quickly as I could—_beskar'kandar _was a mark of adulthood, after all, and I was no older than five when this happened—and stumbled out into the common area of the ship. Sitting on one of the few seats in the area, as _Mando'ade _when not on duty most often go to practise their combat skills, was a woman. Her hair emerged from beneath her hood, marking her age, but in those days, it was less white and more the same colour grey as _beskar_—or, at least, I remember making that comparison. She was clad in brown and ivory robes as many Jedi are, but she lacked that aura of sanctimony I was told about when my mother told me stories of the _jetti_—the _Mando'a _name for Jedi—and instead seemed to radiate an aura, not of menace, but close enough to menace that it commanded respect from even the most arrogant warriors in the clan.

When she stood, I remember wondering at how such an old woman, a Jedi, no less, who as a whole we viewed as self-important, cowardly bureaucrats, could have such good posture and not be among the _Mando'ade. _She bore no weapon, which I thought strange, as I had heard that Jedi were marked by their possession of lightsabers from which they never parted.

She walked towards me, and with every measured, precise step she took, my mother stiffened further and further, until when the Jedi crouched to my height, my mother could have been mistaken for a statue. "Hello, young one," said the Jedi, her voice creaking with age but rippling with power and authority. "And what is your name?"

"Kylo, of the clan Wren," I replied proudly—I knew not where my trepidation had gone, but to be honest, at that point it could not be rightly said that I particularly noticed or cared.

"Kylo Wren. A good name," she said, and I caught a glimpse of what the hood hid—eyes that were milky white and without sight. She was blind, and yet commanded such respect from my people, which was a sign to me that I really should have been more frightened by her than I was at the time. I freely admit that I was a foolish, idealistic child, believing fully in the _Resol'nare _and the power it gave to those who lived by the code. She stood. "The child will accompany me."

I was about to protest until I felt my mother's grip on my shoulder tighten almost painfully as she spoke, her voice strained even through the vocabulator—the Jedi either didn't notice or didn't care, and knowing her, I'm sure it was the latter. "Very well. Shall he return?"

"No, I don't imagine he will," the Jedi said rather blithely. "I shall give you half of an hour to say your farewells. Then, the child will come, or he will be taken." She then exited the room and made her way back to her own transport.

As soon as she was out of earshot, my mother knelt before me, grasping my shoulders tightly as she pried off her mask, looking me in the eye. "Be strong, Kylo. Be brave."

"But I don't want to leave!" I objected.

"We have no choice. You…you are Force-sensitive, and even if you stayed here, your life would become far more difficult." At this point, my mother was near to tears. "I do not wish that kind of life upon anyone, least of all you, my little soldier." She kissed my brow at this point, and it was desperate and filled with sorrow. "Go, and become powerful, but never forget where you came from. Never forget your _aliit._"

"Never," I swore, shaking my head profusely.

It was at that point that my cousin Drex and his friend Ka'an grabbed me by the arms and escorted me away from my mother, away from the life I had known, and towards the hangar. They tossed me like a ragdoll into the Jedi woman's ship, as she stood there and watched in a fashion somehow at once dispassionate and expectant. I had come to expect most adult _dar'manda_ to change their tone of voice and demeanour when talking to children; this woman, however, was hard and harsh, and as this was closer to the ways of the _Mando'ade, _it did far more to put me at ease than empty platitudes and false assurances could ever have done. "Step lively, Kylo Wren. We are expected, and I do not tolerate tardiness."

I nodded, unable to find the strength to speak what was on my mind, and stepped onto her transport ship, sitting silently in the corner as we made the hyperspace jump to Dantooine.

* * *

"That's it?" asked Bastila. "No tragedy? No murder?"

"Nothing begins evil, Bastila Shan—neither sentients nor stories," replied Revan. "Though I remember not seeing it in _quite _that way at the time."

* * *

_Master Kreia, as I later learned the Jedi was named, was as hard of a woman as I had expected after our first meeting. She brought me before the Jedi Council in the Enclave while I was still glassy-eyed and more a marionnette than a human being, given how I had been forced to leave my family behind and become _dar'manda. _Life had no meaning to me anymore, and not even Master Kreia, with her ability to act with relative impunity, could get a word out of me all throughout my 'adjustment period,' wherein I stayed in Master Kreia's cottage some fifty kliks away, with only her and myself as the occupants. I know not who cooked, for at the time, I lacked the knowledge and she lacked the inclination. Regardless, I was fed three times a day at regular intervals, had my own room with my own cot, and basically had my every physical requirement seen to._

_I never needed to speak around Master Kreia, which was fortunate; I learned the penalty for annoying her years later, and I do not think that I, as I was at that age, could have survived her wrath._

* * *

"When did you learn what it was to irritate her?" Bastila interrupted.

Revan responded with a dismissive wave of his hand. "A story for another time—perhaps tomorrow, even. Now, where was I? Ah!"

* * *

_What was supposed to be three days became three weeks. Then three months. Then six months. I was almost six years old when I spoke my first word in Galactic Basic—in which I was hardly fluent at the time, mind you. It was the day that I met _them_… My new _aliit_._

* * *

News of my arrival had spread throughout the Enclave like a pack of gizka. Rumours began amongst the younglings—that I was some dashing rogue or abandoned runt. Because the Jedi take all Force-sensitive races, there was even a rumour that I was a female Zabrak at some point. But no rumour and no amount of cryptic information could have stopped a single intrepid youngling from making contact, and dragging a young boy with her along the way.

I still remember spotting her out of the corner of my eye as I struggled to meditate. I remember the gentle breeze making her pale blonde hair billow, her eyes like blue crystal that was focused on hunting her quarry, her face beautiful in a way I had never before seen. Among the Wren clan, there weren't really many children. Why, I don't know, but I had never before met a person near to my age. And I remember seeing the boy, bald and somewhat shy and tentative as many children are at that age. But, all of a sudden, when I focused on them, I could _feel _them in the Force—her power was wild and untamed and brazen, while his was quiet and unassuming to a great degree. Alek always was the least of us in terms of his command of the Force, and that nagged at him to no end as we aged and our connections to the Force grew exponentially.

Once darkness fell, and I was attempting to meditate so as to stave off the nightmares, or so I thought at the time, I snuck out of Master Kreia's cottage and made my way to the Enclave. I hadn't been there since I got to Dantooine, and so I employed the tracking skills my mother taught me while hunting to track them both back to the Enclave. Now, if you've ever tried to sneak in or out of the Enclave under the cover of night, as I'm beginning to be increasingly certain that you have not, you'll know it's not an easy task—well, for a _dar'manda, _that is—but it was still a bit of a daunting prospect for me.

The Republic was in a state of relative peace at the time, and Exar Kun's adherents had long since perished, and so security was relatively lax—nothing like it is now. And before you say anything, _yes_, I _am _aware that it is solely due to my actions that that is no longer the case. If I wanted a lecture, I'd have requested Vrook come visit me. Now, where was I again? Ah! Yes! You must understand that this was long before Kavar went off to die in the Mandalorian Wars, and so it was that the girl for whom I searched slept near her master, as she had already been taken on as a Padawan, having shown great promise in her connection to the Force. I know not by what providence I was able to reach her bedside relatively unmolested, but I did.

She was the first _dar'manda_ girl I had ever seen—Mandalorians live rather reclusive lives with regards to the outside galaxy, after all—and I was…stricken…by her beauty. Her hair was, in those days, long and a vibrant blonde, almost to the point where the padawan braid was straining at the seams, for unlike those who most often have hair of that hue, hers grew in thick and somewhat unruly. Her face was fierce, even in restful sleep, and it seemed that youth and aggression flowed from her in a way unlike that of any other I had known. I stared at her as she slept in contemplation. When my legs ached, I retrieved a chair and sat, puzzling over the unfamiliar geometries of her wild and vivacious features. I felt…_drawn _to them, and for the first time in my life, I wanted to know _why._ _Why_ was I drawn to _her _when the thought of meeting anyone new made my stomach turn.

Invariably, I was gone by the time the sun rose, but as days turned into weeks and weeks into months, I slowly became more brazen. I wouldn't return the chair I had put at her bedside, for example. Having heard nothing from Master Kreia on the subject, the evidence of my visitation became more overt. It was a slow growth, but an undeniable one.

The final straw, I think, was when I left Iridonian lilies in a vase next to her bed, because the next night, as I snuck into her room—having grown familiar with her at rest and now nowhere near as conscious of changes as I ought to have been—I sat down at her bedside, a full bouquet in my hand. It wasn't until I placed the bouquet in a crystal glass vase that she spoke up and said, "Personally, I preferred the Iridonian lilies. They're a far more _personal _touch."

It was at this point when I noticed that I was quickly entering a state of cardiac arrest.

* * *

"Cardiac arrest?" Bastila asked, baffled that such an imposing figure could come from such a skittish child.

"Perhaps that is a rather…_hyperbolic _way of putting such things, I admit," remarked Revan. "Regardless, the fact that she was conscious startled me and sent me into a state of slight panic nonetheless."

* * *

_You see, Bastila, I am, by nature, a very paranoid sort, and that was especially true as a child, being taken from everything I knew and being thrust into this unfamiliar, possibly hostile situation. The fact that the one facet of my life over which I felt I still held any control now was self-aware was enough to…aggravate that nature, if you will. Suffice it to say that when I made contact with her eyes, blue as a spirit crystal, I was very frightened, to the point where I could not say a word, neither in Mando'a nor in Galactic Basic. She seemed to find this trait of mine suitably amusing, and laughed at my speechless state._

* * *

However, amusement slowly turned to confusion, and then concern. "Are you alright?" she asked. "Hello? Anyone in there?"

"You are…awake…" I managed to force out in Galactic Basic, keeping in mind that my ethnicity would not make me very popular around the other younglings and Padawans, and so preserving the wherewithal not to respond in my mother tongue.

"No, I'm a sleep-walker. _Yes, _I'm awake," she joked. It took me a moment to realise that, of course, and so it took me a while to calm down. "You're the newcomer, aren't you? Master Kreia's pet project. Kylo Ren, right?"

My immediate instinct was to correct her until I realised that _of course _Master Kreia hadn't given everyone my real name, and so I simply nodded.

She smiled brilliantly. "Meetra Surik," she introduced, sticking out her hand. Tentatively, I took the proffered limb and shook it firmly, though she herself possessed a nearly hand-crushing amount of strength behind it—which was reassuring; I'd imagine my mother had a similar grip.

She talked at me for a while, and I responded in halting Basic until the sun neared the horizon. At that point, her eyes were bloodshot from not having slept, but as there had been nothing I could do to turn down her bubbly personality to a sensible level, and so I had decided that discretion was the better part of valour and didn't push the issue. Finally, her body just gave out and she fell into a deep sleep, and I made to escape the Enclave before anyone noticed. I knew not the significance of the meeting at the time, but I had just met my first friend.

* * *

"And did you succeed? In escaping the Enclave?"

Revan's response somehow sounded wry, and she could hear the grin on his face. "No. When I got back to the cottage, Master Kreia sat in wait for me. Contrary to my immediate fears, she wasn't angry. 'It seems you've adjusted rather well,' were her exact words. 'Well enough to go train with the rest of them, at least every once in a while, my Padawan.'" Revan laughed bitterly. "She had known the entire time about my moonlit escapades, it seemed, and took me on as a Padawan only after I had developed something of an anchor here on Dantooine. Though I find myself curious as to how much of what would later transpire was well within her powers to predict…" He sighed. "Anyway, that's the end of that story."

"What about Malak?" Bastila could not help but ask.

"That's something of a different story, and a far less interesting one at that," Revan said. "Alek and I only grew close due to his friendship with Meetra. In fact, I'm almost certain that he followed her out of a certain romantic interest which the war and the Jedi Council made impossible." His tone, while nonchalant on the surface, seemed to seethe bitterness and anger. Bastila made a note of that—that he had had some profound emotional connection to her, the very same woman who, until Malak and Revan returned from the war, was thought of as a genocidal egomaniac for the wasteland that was left of Malachor V. But Revan—_Kylo,_ she corrected herself—had not seemed the type to have that strong of an emotional attachment to someone like the way Surik had often be described. This would have to be discussed with the Council. Though…

"Wait, _Padawan?!_"

"Yes," Revan said, seeming surprised at her tone. "Master Kreia took me in as her first and only Padawan."

This boggled Bastila's mind, that a child be taken as a Padawan at such a young age. "Wh…"

"_Why?_" he supplied with an edge of incredulity, tempered with amusement. "I feel as though that was always the question whenever one spoke of or to Master Kreia. She had no agenda and nothing to gain. If this were before the war, and I was a Jedi still, I would suppose it was a cautionary measure against the Jedi Council discerning my true heritage, but knowing what I know now…" He shrugged. "It was probably because the Force told her to do it."

"The _Force_…" Bastila repeated somewhat incredulously, "_told _her to…?"

Revan chuckled, shaking his hooded head. "Bastila Shan, have you ever heard of the Bendu? It's an order of Force users so intimately connected to the Force that the disparity between the Light Side and the Dark has lost all meaning to them. They simply live by the Force and discern its echoes as what it desires." Revan sighed. "I'd imagine that we'd have quite different world views by this point, what with me being Sith and all—though, if you think about it, the label and all it entails fit her pretty well, seeing as the Bendu see the Sith and Jedi both as nothing more than foolish children bickering over what she would probably say is an arbitrary distinction."

"But…that's _wrong,_" Bastila objected.

Revan chuckled. "You know, once upon a time, I would have agreed with you fully and completely. As it stands, however…" He shook his head again. "When you think about it, all distinctions are by their nature arbitrary and subjective. Dark and Light, good and evil, life and death—in the end, all is as one before the Force. Now, granted, I can observe the fact that they are correct and still follow the Sith Code; I am simply not shackled to the idea that _my _way is the _only _way. My rage, my pain, my fear, my sorrow—all these things fuel me as a person as well as my connection to the Force so intimately and completely that the state of perfect neutrality possessed by the Bendu is, to an extent, impossible for me." Revan fell into silence for a time, before saying in a chiding tone completely at odds with the tone he had taken to tell the first part of his story, "Now, run along, Bastila Shan. I'd imagine it unwise for your Jedi _Masters _to be kept waiting."

"I…"

"Oh, don't give me that," he spat in exasperation. "I am not unintelligent, Bastila. We both know that these little…_visitations_ we have are contingent upon your reporting to the Jedi Council every so often."

"Then…if you hate the Jedi so much, why are you…?"

"Talking to you?" Revan supplied. "Not entirely sure myself. But ultimately, it is no matter. The answer will soon make itself apparent to us both, I feel. Now, _do _run along, Bastila."

"What will you do here?"

He shrugged. "Sit in the capsule and meditate, I should think? Remembering the days before the war is a bit of an exhausting task for me, and one from which the Dark Side would rather I would refrain, if the amount of it clouding my mind is anything to go by."

"If you know it seeks to consume you, why do you serve it?"

"Because it is _power,_" he replied easily. "Power that is dangerous and not to be trifled with, most assuredly, but power all the same."

"And was the power worth it?"

He spread his arms out so as to encapsulate the entire cell. "'I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.' You tell me, Bastila—is the ability to derive strength from your pain worth the cost? I should think so."

With that disturbing last thought of R—Kylo's, she turned and left the room, careful and precise in her maintenance of her decorum.

* * *

Darth Revan watched every measured step that Bastila Shan took up the stairs before chuckling to himself and shaking his head as he returned to his meditation chamber. He was getting to her, and he knew it. One thing that many Sith had never understood, and a very large part of the reason why their seductions were able to be resisted, was that deception was often unnecessary—usually, the truth, blunt and unabridged, was terrible enough.

_**To be continued...**_


	3. Chapter 02

Bastila did not rest easy that night, her meditations interrupted by the beating of a drum, and no matter how much she opened herself to the Light Side of the Force, it would not come to her, seemingly driven off by the warlike beating of that drum. It was very precise and very regular, as if meant to keep time more so than to be an instrument all of its own. In fact, it sounded almost like a heartbeat, rapping a rhythmic tattoo against the inside of her head, thrumming across threads of the Force as they began to grey and blacken until the temerity of the Dark Side superseded her call to the Light, and for a split second before she broke away, emerging from her trance in a cold sweat, short of breath and with a racing heart, she felt it brush up against her like some loathsome serpent, and she knew what that beating was—the sound of Revan's heart, the sound of the heart of Kylo Wren, beating across the Force. Was he _that _powerful that his very heartbeats cause reverberations throughout the Force itself? The thought was terrifying beyond belief, to be certain—what exactly would someone like him be capable of?

Such disturbing thoughts passed through Bastila's mind, and not even the recitation of the Jedi Code, typically a mantra against the Dark Side and formulated and metered for that task almost exclusively, could calm her inner turmoil. And so she walked. She left her chamber and walked quietly through the Enclave to the training area, her double-bladed lightsaber's hilt in hand. Activating the training droids, she ignited her lightsaber in time for all of them to charge her, practise foils raised high above their heads.

Several minutes later, the droids had been reduced to scrap, but Bastila hosted a score of new bruises and minor burns herself. The calmness of mind that allowed the Force to guide a Jedi's lightsaber had escaped her, so polluted with turmoil were the pools of life energy that allowed the Force to flow, and as such, her task had been far more difficult, having to devote her attention to all the droids at once, as opposed to allowing the Force to allow her to keep the pace. She tucked a stray lock of brown hair behind her ear, but yelped when she felt a familiar presence right behind her.

_So, Bastila Shan—was this truly all the skill needed to defeat me? I must be getting soft in my old age that I might allow such a neophyte to strike me down… How very unacceptable, _came Revan's voice into her mind, at once amused and disappointed. _Come down to my chamber, child, and let me regale you with another tale of my childhood. Perhaps then you might find that your paradigm regarding the art of fencing has changed._

"...Revan?" Bastila asked.

She could hear him chuckling, which was a shock. She had no idea that he could laugh! _In the flesh—after a fashion,_ came his response. _Come down. I've just finished meditating, and your feelings of restlessness are most distressing when attempting to sleep. So, seeing as our link has caused us both to become insomniacs, we might as well make the best of it, hmm? Oh, and don't forget to bring your lightsaber. You will need it._

Bastila was about to protest, wishing nothing more than to go lick her wounds and nurse her wounded pride, but thought better of it when she realised that she was going to hear the story sooner or later, and that hearing it sooner might mean that she could part company with him sooner, given that they would be making progress regardless. "Very well," she finally agreed despite her exhaustion. Revan was a master storyteller, and so at least it would be interesting and perhaps give her some more insight into what made a half-Mandalorian boy into the most feared Sith Lord since the days of the Great Hyperspace War.

Bastila washed herself in the refresher, donning her Jedi robes and walking down to where Revan was held, his egg-shaped meditation chamber open, though with his hood still up, those horrible glowing yellow eyes staring out at the world, uncaring, unblinking, and calculating to the extreme, as if every twitch of every muscle of hers was planned and catalogued and accounted for down to the slightest impetus to motion. It sent a chill down her spine, doubly so when she sensed that in the strangely complete shadows of his hood, he was smiling. "Ah, Bastila—right on time. Come, come, sit," he said, gesturing to the ground in front of his transparisteel enclosure. "Now, where was I… Oh, yes, my first fencing lessons!"

* * *

_The next day, as a Padawan, I had a lot to learn to live up to the title. At first, presumably to avoid suspicion, Master Kreia had me attending Vrook's classes with the other children my age, and I thought that I was finally going to be free to mingle, to learn, and to find new friends. Unfortunately, Vrook had never agreed with Master Kreia's...methods, and he took out his hate for her on me, hating me for having skirted the rules, hating me for associating with Master Kreia. Zhar and Vandar did their best to convince him, I'm sure, that hatred of me could well be dangerous—for while they were not so flippant with it as he, they, too, distrusted my blind master for her views on the Force and her knowledge of the nature of the Dark Side. And so Vrook took a rather particular pleasure in playing the part of the...__**disciplinarian, **__as it were._

* * *

I was excited, actually, the first day Master Kreia officially took me to the Enclave for my first lessons in the art of fencing. She accompanied me so that I wouldn't get lost, at least officially, since we both knew I knew my way around the Enclave. I'd always had that—that sense of direction, and only later did I discover that that was the Force at work. But appearances had to be kept, and so Master Kreia escorted me to the dojo where the class for Padawans, not younglings, sought instruction. This was by Vrook's orders, of course, and so I found myself amidst a group of people who were at least two years older than me, who had had instruction I had not, who had much more control over their Force sensitivity than I did, and it was, I think, supposed to be a way to humble me. Although, as he came to understand, I am not so easily cowed as he thought I would be.

When Master Kreia left with nary a word, it was not seconds before Vrook entered, dressed in those horrible orange robes he prefers to wear for some reason—they hurt the eyes they were so unbelievably garish—and his lightsaber clipped to his belt. That was something else I did not have—we were precisely one lightfoil short for the entire class to have one, and that someone was me. "Padawan Kylo Ren! Where is your lightfoil?!" he demanded as he walked in, a strange bald boy with grey markings on his head at his heels, acting as if he didn't know damn well where the practise sabres were.

"I do not have one, sir," I responded, trying to be polite. I wanted to make a good impression, you see, and yet Vrook's immediate hatred of me and all I represented, which was essentially my master's ability to act with impunity without the Council proper wishing to join him in reprimanding her, was easily felt in his Force signature. This was the first full Jedi I had met, and so it was he who shaped my expectations of the entire order. So knowing the old tosser, you should be able to understand why my opinion of your kind is so almost uniformly low. I can count the decent Jedi I have met on one hand out of the hundreds, thousands of you infesting the galaxy. Those aren't very encouraging statistics, you know. Not very encouraging statistics at all. But I digress.

"See here, Padawans. This is the product of negligence. Always be attentive, always be prepared, and never hasty, lest you indulge in this sort of remission," Vrook called out, stepping into parade rest as he continued to attempt to make a fool out of me. He took the lightsaber out of his belt and held it out to me, like a piece of meat to a kath hound you're trying to teach tricks to. "Here, you may use my lightsaber. In the future, have a lightfoil, or don't come to class. I do not tolerate indolence amongst my students, no matter _who _their masters are. Now, Padawans, break off into groups of two, and practise the first through fourth kata of Shii-Cho with each other. Padawan Kylo, you'll work with my Padawan, Alek. He should be well-qualified to give you remedial attentions."

Now you see, back then, when Alek was still a Padawan, before we became friends, he had been Vrook's student through and through. He was awkward even years later, and was always attempting to be the voice of reason, the voice of the Jedi Council, among Meetra and me when we went on adventures that either bent or outright flouted the rules. He worshipped Vrook, stern and taciturn and curmudgeonous, saw him as an idol of everything a Jedi, let alone a Jedi Master, should aspire to be, and so he eyed me with a grey gaze filled with suspicion and more than a little bit of fear. That's what Master Kreia instilled in the other Jedi around her with her studies and her intimate knowledge of the nature of the Force—_fear; _and that was a feeling that afforded her nearly complete impunity when, had she been anyone else, she would have had her connection to the Force severed long before ever meeting me.

Regardless, it was clear to me then as it is clear to me now that Alek didn't trust me, not even a little bit, and so when he ignited his lightfoil and I couldn't find the activation plate, wherever Vrook had put it on the damnable machine, he didn't believe me and kept his lightfoil at the ready, his guard up. It was a full minute of awkwardness with me fumbling for the activation plate before Vrook came over with a stern sigh, and ignited the lightsaber for me before handing it back. The grip was entirely too thick for my hand, not at all like the lightfoil Alek had, and so I _had _to hold it in a two-handed grip, despite the fact that the balancing and the weight and the diameter were ludicrously wrong for me. As such, my technique and kinesthesia when it came to the nearly-weightless weapon were all off, but I still saw the openings he left behind with his wide swings as he practised the simplest and, in my opinion, second most intrinsically flawed forms of lightsaber combat.

Now, had I been a _normal _child born on Deralia like the records say I was, I wouldn't have known what to do, and Alek would have trounced me quite soundly and perhaps even ended me rightly, then apologising when it became clear I had no idea what the kriff I was doing. As it stood, however, I was no ordinary child. The lightsaber was an unfamiliar weapon in my hands, but when I looked at it, I saw a blade, and when I saw a blade, I thought, 'cut.' So, I tentatively exploited the opening he made when he extended his arm across his body, unable to bring his arm back around in time to deflect the lunge I made for his exposed shoulder. The tip of the lightsaber sunk into his shoulder, perhaps a centimetre or four—I may be rounding down a bit… Anyway, Vrook saw what had happened as Alek cried out in pain, and rushed over and wrenched his lightsaber out of my hand before I struck bone. The look on his face, the barely-suppressed fury at me having the temerity to attack his Padawan, and it was clear without him even having to have said the words that I was no longer welcome in his dojo. And so I cleared off, trying to run back to the hut I shared with Master Kreia. I ran in and closed the door, breathing heavily with my heart pounding in my ears. I thought he would dodge or block or something, but no, he just stood there like a lame Vanqorian gundark and took the lightsaber wound to the shoulder.

A few hours later, Master Kreia found me in the middle of the hut, practising Mandalorian hand-to-hand forms so as to deal with my stress—I hadn't exactly learned to meditate yet by that point, after all—and she closed the door silently and stood there like a hooded phantom, waiting for me to notice that she was there. I jumped when I did, disrupting the soothing flow of what I was doing and putting me into a panic once again. Was she going to lecture me? Punish me? Reprimand me?

None of those things happened, though. After holding my eyes for a minute or two with her blank, sightless gaze, she sighed. "Calm down, boy. Fear is unbecoming of a Jedi," she chided curtly. "I have spoken with Kavar and Vrook. You will be learning fencing from me, now, as is Kavar's Padawan. You two are to be training partners, and you _will_ learn to fight at her level, and in time, surpass her. This is not a request."

I composed myself quickly when I realised that Master Kreia expected some form of response out of me, and so I bowed. "Yes, Master Kreia," I replied, doing my best to hold to some small degree of dignity and etiquette even as my body had yet to stop shaking.

She nodded, stepping aside, and who should come through the door to the hut but the girl I had met earlier that week. "This is Padawan Meetra Surik. She is going to be your training partner."

I froze, taking her in. Her hair had been done into an elegant braid that hung down her shoulder, her face was alight with life and vigour, and she seemed to radiate warmth like a sun. She smiled. "Hey, Kylo! How's it going?"

* * *

"So that's how you officially met her?" Bastila asked, enraptured by the story, though she attempted to maintain decorum and not let the Sith Lord know his tale was gaining ground in what childishness she had left. There was never an idealist born, after all, who did not love a good romance.

Revan nodded. "Indeed that was. Kavar and Master Kreia were never really on good terms, and Meetra wasn't exactly an official Padawan, but she was Padawan enough to take private lessons with another Padawan. And Kavar, Kavar was a masterful teacher. It was watching him duel Master Kreia that got me interested in practising Jar'Kai variants of common lightsaber forms, and his way of approaching lightsaber styles helped me to perfect my own personal hybrid form and allowed me to integrate techniques that I wouldn't learn in the ordinary course into my repertoire."

Bastila nodded, attempting to keep her stately persona while simultaneously being nearly overwhelmed with excitement. "What was your first duel with her like?" she asked despite herself; having always loved stories as a little girl, this tale that seemed like a holovid romance come alive almost made her forget that the point of the exercise was to redeem the Dark Lord of the Sith by understanding the path he had taken to become such.

Revan chuckled, shaking his head. "Ah, to be young again…" he laughed. "Certainly, I can tell you the tales of how I came to learn to fight. But quid pro quo is expected here, Bastila. Come—I meant to help you with your lightsaber forms regardless. Up you get, quick as you like." His tone didn't change and he didn't move, and yet Bastila found herself standing without complaint anyways, taking her yellow double-bladed lightsaber into her hands, and awaiting further instruction. "Take your ready stance," he instructed, and once more, she obeyed, igniting her lightsaber with the familiar _snap-hiss_ of the plasma blade igniting. Revan shook his head. "Your stance is far too wide. Too easy to take off-balance. Your legs should be no further apart than they are during parade rest. And your hands are gripping far too tightly. You're limiting your dexterity with the weapon by doing that, and that is a perilous prospect."

Bastila scowled. "I'm not a kath hound you're trying to train to jump through hoops, Revan," she snapped.

Though she could not see his face, she imagined that he cocked an eyebrow at her. "I never said you were. Now, please follow my instructions—I would hate to have you lose a leg or an arm due to an uncoordinated parry."

Sufficiently chastised, Bastila grumbled, but she obeyed, bringing her stance in and breathing deeply as she released her grip on her lightsaber degree by degree until she was in the relaxed, battle-ready posture Revan asked of her. Immediately, it felt better, lighter and more natural to her than what the Jedi had taught her for years now. She could feel that she was already more mobile than she had been prior, and by a wide margin to boot.

"Very good," Revan said as he nodded his approval. "Now, show me the six basic kata of your hybrid form."

Bastila looked at Revan incredulously, as if looking upon a raving madman, and Revan felt a wave of disappointment, irritation and frustration flow through him like a Mustafaran river, thousands of tonnes of slag and molten rock crushing his high hopes for the Jedi Padawan for the foreseeable future. _I suppose I have my work cut out for me with this one… _he mused to himself as he shifted his positioning, preparing to mimic the motionless teaching style of a particular Jedi, one Vandar Tokare specifically. "You did not think I won against you by simply using one form, do you? The forms are nothing more than the basics—meant to be used by peons, pedestrians, plebians and fools. Certainly not by Force sensitives of your calibre." He resisted the urge to smile as he saw that his words had hit home. She still had no idea how much potential she truly had, but she had an inkling as to how much she was being held back out of fear of her power—whatever miniscule fraction of her true potential of which she _was _aware. He sighed. "It seems remedial lessons are in order, if you would be willing? Entirely gratis, of course."

Bastila cocked her eyebrow, and he could feel her suspicion through the Force bond betwixt them twain. "Why? What do you stand to gain?" she asked, and Revan felt his respect for her grow substantially. An excellent question, and one any True Sith would balk at answering. Thankfully, Darth Revan was considered by the Dark Council on Dromund Kaas a heretic of the highest order, and would never be considered to be amongst the ranks of the True Sith—not in temperament, nor in bearing, nor in motive, nor in method.

As such, Revan decided once again that deception was utterly unnecessary, and elected to convey the blunt truth. "Bastila, I have been in this…_cage _for a month now with nothing but Jedi drivel and meditation to keep my mind active."_ And incidentally, I have enough annotations on the former to fill at least three volumes… _"To be incredibly frank, Bastila, I am _bored._ I am utterly and entirely _bored. _Until two days ago, I was utterly alone down here with nothing to do, and had I been left alone for much longer, I cannot imagine how damaged my sanity would become. Please do not deny me this one favour I ask of you."

Bastila was still suspicious, but Revan remained unconcerned. In truth, he would be surprised and more than a little dismayed if she trusted him implicitly after so little. "What would you know of the double-bladed lightsaber?" she asked, a touch curt.

Revan waved it away. "Enough that had I returned from the Mandalorian Wars a Jedi still, I might well have become the Council's Battlemaster within the month. Now, allow me to explain the concept of a hybrid form—it is quite taxing attempting to devise a way to demonstrate without weapons or so much as the capability of movement necessary to use them…" He trailed off as he grumbled, more than aware that his complaining would not change anything around him, as he was working on rebuilding the stores of Force energy within him that allowed him to survive Malak's attack on the_ Dominator _a month ago. "As I was saying, the basic forms work fine for the neophytes, and indeed, hybrid forms in their hands are rather disadvantageous given their myriad complexities. But a skilled lightsaber duellist can, with practise, bring out all of the strengths of each form in turn, and with more practise still, bring them out simultaneously. For example, _my _hybrid form is a merge of the Jar'Kai variants of Makashi, Soresu, Ataru and Juyo. I've been practising and perfecting it since before the Mandalorian Wars, and now I can say without boasting that in lightsaber combat, I am utterly without peer."

Bastila very nearly scoffed, but he could sense that she could recognise the truth of what he had said simply by looking him in the eye. It disturbed him, as his eyes reminded him that his face was still missing, which brought forth once more the feelings of guilt and anguish that had haunted him until Meetra had calmed them—and as a result of that thought, the guilt and anguish emerged once again, replete with the rising of the emotion that had brought Revan to the Dark Side. Darth Vitiate had not named him the Lord of Vengeance on a lark, after all. But he controlled himself, remembering to harness his emotions and focus their energy on the task at hand. "Disbelieve me as you like—you know as well as I that it was not your lightsaber that felled me, nor the lightsabers of any of your pathetic companions. It was by the treachery of an insolent usurper and the will of the Force that I was defeated, not by any craft that any of you here possess. Now, shall we get to it, or would you rather argue with me all night? I no longer need sleep, so either is fine with me, but in the end, it _is _your choice. Grow, or stagnate. Adapt, or be destroyed. Live, or die. The power to choose any of these is entirely in your hands."

Bastila held out for a time, but eventually assented. "Very well—please, by all means, show me what you know."

Revan smiled knowingly. "So, first thing's first. What would you like your base form to be?" Bastila cocked her head with a furrowed brow, and Revan grew even more dismayed. "Your base form? The form on which you build the rest of it? For example, my base form is the Jar-Kai variant of Juyo. I rely on speed, ferocity, and constant offence. One of the main drawbacks of Juyo, however, is that it lacks for control, restraint, and pacing. Pure Juyo will always lose if the enemy can turn the duel into a war of attrition. To that end, I incorporated Makashi. As you know, like a dance, the Makashi Form is excellent for duellists who prefer footwork and pacing, and as such, I painstakingly incorporated it into my own skillset and modified it to better serve the purpose for which I adopted it.

"But Juyo has a second, and much more pressing issue: that is, when your foe turns the tide of battle against you, what recourse have you than to die? To that end, I merged Makashi's dancelike movements and the defensive midset of Soresu atop Juyo, so that I had a form capable of offence and defence without having to sacrifice anything. Ataru was really just lopped in there because its inherent mobility make it the perfect response to overly defensive opponents. Vectors really are the key to confusion," Revan mused. "But now the task is yours. Your base form should take advantage of your greatest strength—for though it is a hybrid form, it is still very much as it began, merely—_augmented. _So, Bastila, answer me this: what is your greatest strength in a lightsaber duel?"

Bastila was visibly pondering the question for a moment that lasted into eternity. I was about to pose a separate question to lead her to the answer of the first, but she at last beat me to it. "Finesse," she finally replied.

Revan nodded in agreement. "Though your technique is unrefined, you seem to have a natural talent for deft manoeuvring. Very well—Makashi will be the base of your personal style. But Makashi lacks for power, both in attack and defence. You can either shore up your weaknesses, as I did, or play to your strengths. However, I would recommend the latter—Makashi is an excellent form and very well-balanced, and so adopting the extremes like Juyo or Soresu would run counter to your base aptitudes, hampering you. So I would, to that end, suggest that Niman be your second form, as each successive form you adopt into your personal style adds progressively less utility—you get diminishing returns beyond three, which is why in a lightsaber duel, you don't see me jumping around like an Ewok, do you?"

Bastila nodded her head, for there was wisdom in Revan's words, as oddly difficult it was to admit.

"Now put that weapon away and sit, please. I _did _promise you that there was more to this section of the story, did I not?" Revan asked, bemused and quite pleased that Bastila had so readily taken to his well-intentioned advice. After all, if there was anything Revan hated even half as much as the Jedi Order, it was waste. He hated wasted time. He hated wasted resources. He hated wasted words—but above all other kinds of waste, he hated wasted potential the most; and since the culprits for the waste of potential were the Jedi Council, he felt as if he could kill two shyrack with one stone here—training Bastila to the pinnacle of her abilities would most assuredly spite the musty old men so alienated from their emotions they knew not what it was to be sentients in a living, breathing, endlessly mutable galaxy anymore. Honestly, the insolence of them to hamper and stunt the growth of one of their own was absolutely unacceptable.

Putting such thoughts out of his mind at the moment, Revan once again took refuge in the shadows of his meditation egg as he prepared to relate his and Meetra's first training duel, as well as the successive weeks' events until Alek had come to join their little coterie. "Now, where was I… Oh, yes!"

* * *

_Under the supervision of both of our masters, Meetra and I began to blossom as fighters. This was not altogether unexpected—Kavar was considered a fast track to becoming a Guardian back then, and Master Kreia… Master Kreia wasn't known for taking pupils; I was her first and only Padawan, actually. Regardless, on our off-time, Master Kreia would teach me but sparingly the nature of the Force, and most of the time I was to spend on my own, tending to the various things that needed doing around the hut and the surrounding area. I meditated weekly, practised daily, and spent the rest of the time sweeping the floors and cooking Mandalorian rice in hopes that Master Kreia would take a more active role in my tutelage. But it wasn't quite time for that._

* * *

Kavar and Meetra came by twice a week for six hours at a time. Meetra would receive her instructions from Master Kreia, and I would work with Kavar, and then we would spend the last two hours sparring with each other, Master Kreia having presented me with an actual, proper lightfoil shortly before Meetra and my first lesson with Kavar. We learned kata, certainly, but when it came time to spar, we abandoned them and simply fought—with the lightfoils, of course, and so it was not often that one of us suffered serious injury. Usually a few burns or contusions was the extent of the damage—though I suffered them much more frequently than inflicting them, at least at first. After all, Meetra had trained under Kavar for a while before I found myself on Dantooine, so she was obviously much more comfortable with the lightfoil than I was at that point. It was perhaps two months of training, when Kavar finally gave up on teaching me the Jedi-approved forms and instructed me in Juyo, that I was able to defeat her.

"Come on, Kylo!" Meetra jeered, holding her lightfoil at the ready. "Stop being kath shavit and get over here and fight me!"

By this point, she had not a scratch on her, and I was bruised and battered by her superior proficiency with Soresu, which at the time was her favoured form. I couldn't break her defence no matter how I tried, no matter what form I attempted, and I was growing frustrated. Indignation filled me, and so I decided to attempt the form I had only just learned for the first time—Juyo—and when I ignited my lightfoil, I threw caution to the wind and attacked.

Meetra wasn't expecting such an aggressive opening, shaken as I had been by what happened in Vrook's class with Alek. Until then I had been cautious, unconsciously moving slower and more tentatively than I otherwise would have, and now all that fell to the wind as I trusted for the first time in a long time my training, both as a Jedi and a Mandalorian. My blows were swift, fierce and almost frenzied as I finally managed to gain an advantage I could press, putting Meetra for the first time onto her back foot. Soresu is a wonderful form, certainly, but in the hands of someone like Meetra, whose martial training was entirely through the Jedi, the very Mandalorian mindset I was using to wield Juyo was entirely alien, and therefore unpredictable, which is the death knell for a form like Soresu, which, much like Makashi, requires an intimate knowledge of the flow of the duel, the rhythm running back and forth.

It was amidst this that I became aware of someone watching from the nearby brush. It was a substantial Force signature, filled with adoration of Meetra and resentment and distrust of me. Of course, my Force senses were not nearly refined enough to allow me to make the connection between this interloper and Alek, and so I simply trusted that if it was a threat, it was not nearly enough of a threat for Master Kreia to take notice and deal with the issue.

Anyway, I fought in a frenzy, going from moment to moment, attacking without pause for parry or riposte, no thought of openings, just continuing to beat down on her with brute force until the ruthless fighter inside me, the product of what little training I had received from my _aliit _before I was forced to leave, recognised the chance to upset the balance of power between Meetra and myself. As such, I struck like a vaapad and disarmed her, ending by putting my lightfoil to her neck as she yielded the bout to me.

Master Kreia came out clapping, though Kavar looked troubled. The reason, I later learned secondhand, is that it is extremely rare for a Padawan to take to Juyo so quickly, the most dangerous of all seven forms, and for one so young, it was exceedingly perilous, as Juyo's nature was very grey, and very nearly brushed shoulders with the Dark Side, to which, had I succumbed to its manifold and myriad seductions then, I would have fallen fully and completely, become a simple puppet of my emotions.

"Well done, my young Padawan," Master Kreia said in that enigmatic monotone of hers. "We may have found a style at which you excel at last."

Kavar nodded. "You have a lot to learn, young Ren. But I do commend your effort and express, however grudgingly, that Juyo seems to agree with you. However, your technique is sloppy and your pacing is chronically mistimed."

Master Kreia stepped in, seeming bemused by Kavar's words. "Then, my friend, why don't we give our young Padawans a demonstration of a proper lightsaber duel."

For a moment, Kavar favoured Master Kreia with a suspicious gaze; however, his questing eyes found no purchase in the enigmatic marks of age upon her face, and as such, he nodded and assented to her suggestion. "Padawans, clear the platform," he said as he unclipped the hilts of his lightsabers from either side of his belt, taking an unfamiliar stance as he ignited his matching blue lightsabers, and Kreia removed her green lightsaber from her voluminous brown-and-grey robes that smelled of ash and then took a Shii-Cho stance. It was merest moments before they rushed together in a clash.  
Master Kreia brought her lightsaber up to block the twin overhead strikes that Kavar opened with, catching them and batting them to the side. However, when she went to riposte, Kavar's lightsabers were right there in a cruciform shape as Kavar parried. He forced her lightsaber away, and then both Jedi retreated to gain distance, and once they were away from each other, they began circling, lightsabers at the ready, each scanning the other and waiting for them to make a mistake.

At once, they both charged, and with an angry sputtering hissing noise, they clashed. This was my first time watching two Jedi Masters, or anyone, really, engaging in a lightsaber duel, and I was young, and as such, enthralled by the display. I memorised every movement, every strike and parry, every manoeuvre as Jedi Master clashed with Jedi Master. They broke apart, neither having gained the advantage, and gained distance to regroup. Seeing Kavar's flowing, elegant movements that still held all the ferocity of a krayt dragon, twin 'sabers whirling in their endless dance—it enkindled something in me, a sort of ironclad resolve to see that I was one day to master that which I now know Kavar merely dabbled in. Such was my first exposure to the style that I have since adopted and perfected.

Alas, I was not then aware of the costs and the risks inherent in asking Master Kreia to allow me to do that very thing—but I was made aware in short order…

* * *

"Now, I daresay it is past time you go to get some rest," said Revan, unexpectedly jerking Bastila out of the deep immersion and interest she had adopted in the process of listening to the story the Sith Lord was telling. "It will be dawn soon, and it will appear suspicious that you declined to come down here to talk to me today if you don't at least attempt to go to sleep."

Bastila bristled at being treated like a youngling, but calmed her frustration with a mantra of the Jedi Code, bringing her emotions into line. "Is there not more to your story?" she asked, carefully composed and calm, even as the turmoil within her, suppressed but not quelled, continued to buck against her attempts to control it.

Revan shrugged. "Perhaps, but that is a conversation, perhaps, for another time. Now, when you come to me tomorrow, please do not do so before midday. I mislike being woken up before that time when I have been conscious for more than twenty-four galactic standard hours."

Sensing that she would get no more out of the strangely polite Sith Lord, she decided to cut her losses and withdraw at last, and do as the half-Mandalorian former war hero suggested in taking a rest and pursuing more information when she was fresh and refreshed, so as to be more adroit in ferreting out opportunities to redeem him in listening to his story. She was close, or rather, such was her professional opinion on the matter, but she felt like she was missing something—something important. She nodded as she stood. "Farewell for now, then, Revan."

With that, Bastila turned on her heel and began to walk out of the prison block beneath the Enclave, but stopped at the top of the stair—she couldn't see his face, but she could hear the smirk in his voice as he spoke. "Sleep well, Bastila Shan."

She stiffened a tad, and then walked away.

_**To be continued...**_


	4. Chapter 03

As it turned out, Bastila herself did not rouse from her meditations until an hour prior to midday. Having missed the communal morning meal with the rest of the Padawans and their Jedi instructors, she grabbed a nutrient bar out of her emergency cache and wolfed down the protein-paste filled carbohydrate exterior as she walked to procure food for Revan. She could stomach the taste, but she remembered reading something about Mandalorian physiology, and as such took a detour through the kitchens. Cooking was not something she enjoyed doing, though she could do it surprisingly well, but twenty minutes later, she was walking down the steps to Revan's cell, a tray piled high with food in her hands. When she stepped down to the floor, she saw for the first time a part of Revan's head that wasn't covered or shrouded. Indeed, Revan possessed long black hair that cascaded down past his shoulders a tad, though Bastila was almost certain that which extended below his shoulders was new growth, since being in prison under Jedi supervision did not allow for one to look after their vanity. He was sitting cross-legged in his meditation egg as it opened with a hiss and a rush of pressurised air.

"Ah. Bastila. Your timing is most…_fortuitous,_" said Revan as he reached back with his gauntleted hands and donned his hood before rotating his isolation egg's seat to face her, his glowing yellow eyes locking with her grey orbs. That said, she could almost see his eyebrow twitch in the shadows of his cowl. "I take it you did not rest easy? A pity. You have my apologies for keeping you from your meditations as long as I did. I take comfort, however, in the possibility that my stories did aught to calm your mind and answer a number of questions that you might have had." He looked pointedly at the tray, and a smile entered his voice. "Ah, how very considerate of you. Knowing your enemy, I take it? Since I doubt you had the time to research Mandalorian physiology between when we spoke last night and right now."

"I… Yes… The Council thought it best that the Padawans study the Mandalorians, in the event that your war spread to us," Bastila said with a twinge of bitterness.

Revan chuckled. "Well, in any event, I'm certain that you did your best. Come, share it with me. None of the extra amino acids we Mandalorians need are necessarily dangerous to humans, and while I might well be famished, I never really did have much in the way of an appetite—even when out in the field."

It occurred to Bastila that Darth Revan was unusually polite for a Sith Lord; all the teachings the Jedi Masters had given her and her fellow Padawans on the subject was that the Sith were vile, belligerent monsters, twisted and warped by the Dark Side into mere mockeries of themselves, mangled and corrupted shadows of what they once were and hollow shells of what they once could have been, after all. And yet, despite this, Bastila did not feel especially surprised. Barring their first and second meetings, Revan had been, while perhaps a bit pedantic, certainly a pleasant individual to sit and converse with to the degree that Bastila found herself constantly having to remind herself that Revan was Sith—that he was the Enemy, the one who would, given the chance, bring ruin upon her, her friends, and all she knew and loved. "You know, Rev...Kylo…"

"Revan, please," the Sith Lord interjected. "I haven't been Kylo for nearly a decade."

Bastila hesitated before nodding. "Revan, then. You're awfully polite for a Sith."

"And you're awfully direct for a Jedi," Revan rebutted, a smile in the tone of his voice.

Despite her better judgement, Bastila found herself laughing—one of her biggest flaws according to the Council was merely a playful jab for Revan, which Bastila found to be something approaching refreshing.

Revan continued chuckling. "Indeed—I remember that I once, and in all probability, still do, hold the venerable moniker of 'Lord of Heresy.' It's a far cry from 'Lord of Vengeance,' but I find that it often has its own charm. Now, we were in the middle of a tale when we retired for the evening, were we not? Or would you like me to skip ahead a bit? I will allow you to choose, if only because today's story may well sound...fantastical, and sometimes does even to my ears—I who know unequivocally precisely what it was I found that day."

"I do not believe the Jedi Masters sent me down here that I might hear only an abridged version of the events that put you on the path to the present," Bastila pointed out.

Bastila could see no more of his face than she could the entire time she had spent here, listening to Revan's stories. And yet, she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Revan was smirking under that damnable hood of his. "I notice that you did not answer my question, and so I shall impart this piece of advice: I find that oftentimes, that which sentients do not say often speaks more thoroughly and more honestly than what they do. Regardless, today's story begins with a boy, enthralled by what he had seen, and the consequences of his rather...open and overt fascination with the sight in question."

* * *

_Master Kreia, you must understand, had good reason for never having taken another Padawan__ before or after me. She was not a kind woman, and understood concepts such as compassion and empathy in the abstract sense much more than the inherent. And knowing what I know now, were she alive, she would have made a great Sith Master—one of the best, even, I would venture to say. She had no patience for the trappings of childhood and the idle fancies inherent therein, and that often informed her demeanour and the methods she chose to better acquaint me with the Force._

* * *

The morning after the bout between Kavar and Master Kreia, the rising sun found me in the yard where an impromptu Padawan training ring had been set up, trying to mimic Kavar's movements with a lightfoil in each hand. It...wasn't as simple as I thought it would be. It is said that the skill of a master can make even the most elaborate of techniques seem simple child's play, and in my hubris, I thought that my natural ambidexterity would at once translate perfectly into the use of both weapons.

However, there was, as I learned, more to wielding two weapons at once than simply being able to hold them. Even for an ambidextrous person, there were issues of weight, balance, mass, kinesthesia—a myriad of issues conspired, it seemed, to keep me from achieving that image of prowess I saw when I looked upon Kavar and his lightsabers. Nevertheless, as a child, I knew not the meaning of a fruitless endeavour, and as such I continued day in and day out. Every morning for two months, I awoke before the dawn, and in the grey that preceded the sun, I would continue to practise holding and moving both weapons at once, and my success was not immediate. Little by little did I improve my skills—frustratingly little, or so it seemed through the veil of my childish impatience.

At any rate, on the morning two months exactly after Master Kreia and Kavar fought, I was finally getting the hang of utilising both blades in some of the more basic kata of Jar'Kai I had learned by watching Kavar, when I turned to complete a rotation and glimpsed Master Kreia standing there, watching with her sightless eyes, startling me to the extent that I very nearly lopped my own head off with the lightfoils I was practising with. I did my best to recover my decorum, but though I thought about attempting to hide the lightfoils behind my back, I decided against it on the grounds that such a manoeuvre, beyond being completely useless since I knew not how long Master Kreia had been standing there, watching silently and somehow masking her presence in the Force, would likely wind up more comical than effective, and might well draw attention to the practise weapons, which would have been more than a little counterproductive, to say the least. "M-Master Kreia!" I stuttered, trying unsuccessfully to calm my pulse. This was before I knew that she enjoyed playing little tricks like this on me—I wouldn't realise that little factoid until I was fifteen.

"And why is it that I walk outside to find my Padawan attempting to kill himself?" she asked in that judgemental monotone of hers—the one that oozed disapproval like blood out of a hibernating Trandoshan…and no, you may not ask me how I know that.

I coloured a bit, still not quite comfortable on this strange planet, and as such still easily cowed by Master Kreia. "I've been trying to study the basics of Jar'Kai…" I muttered, still evidently loud enough for Master Kreia to have heard it.

"Well if you're going to keep moving like you just were, then perhaps first mastering one 'saber would be more practical," Kreia droned, and I couldn't shake the profound feeling that she was belittling me—although, at the time, it would have perhaps been more accurate to say that she 'demonstrated her lack of faith in my abilities.'

I could feel myself growing at once indignant and resolute, and I knew I was about to double down—it had ever been my inclination to prove wrong those who doubted my capabilities, and still is to this day…that is, if you converse with Malak's missing jaw on the issue, at any rate. But I digress; nowadays, I can recognise the signs and oftentimes bring them into line, but at that age? I was a glorified youngling with a chip on my shoulder the size of a Selkath head frozen in carbonite. I barely knew which way was up, but I had the temerity, even then, to challenge my master on the matter of my abilities. "Master Kreia, with all due respect, if you were to instruct me in just about anything, I'd wager I could master this in just under a Coruscanti standard week," I said as I went into parade rest, doing my best to keep the childish spite out of my voice.

Master Kreia seemed...amused, somehow. "Oh?" she challenged, giving me one chance to back down.

And like an Alderaanian nerf herder, I didn't. "Indeed, Master Kreia. I mean no disrespect, but I am a Padawan learner, not some youngling that must be counselled in how to stop screaming for their mother because they had their first Force vision."

She chuckled, shaking her head. "Very well then, my young Padawan. On the other side of Dantooine is a cave—a cave holding a crystal of some great significance. You are to go there, alone, and meditate before the crystal. Then, you will comprehend your first true lesson." She bent down and picked a stick off of the ground and pressed it into my grasp. "You will make this journey with nothing more than the clothes on your back and this stick, or you will die. This is what is expected of a Padawan learner. If you are truly up to that calibre of power and maturity, then surely, this lesson ought to be a pittance of a task—_child's play, _some might say."

Now, in retrospect, it seemed obvious that this was my last chance to take the out, but I was bullheaded and foolish—though I was much wiser back then than I became later, I must admit. Regardless, at the time, I saw it as one final expression of her doubt in my abilities, and I could not let that stand. "Very well, Master. I trust you will await my return?"

"If you survive," she replied wryly. "If you survive…"

* * *

"Why do I get the feeling that things did not go entirely according to plan?" Bastila asked with a smirk.

"Because you're not a blind, deaf, comatose lobotomy patient? Or Atris?" Revan replied blithely. "I mean, seriously, the woman surrounds herself with supple, nubile Echani woman-flesh day in and day out for every day there's not a convention of the Jedi Council on Coruscant. Who does she think she's fooling? But I digress. One thing I learned very early on, Bastila, is that no plan ever quite survives first contact with the enemy. In this case, the enemy was the logistics of travel beyond that which most children should be expected to undertake. However, since I, in my hubris, had volunteered for this task, I set out with my Jedi robes, since I had not yet gotten my braid, and with the stick in hand and without any credits, I began to strike out for the other side of the planet."

Bastila, however was still reeling from that which Revan had spoken entirely out of hand. "I'm sorry, _what _was that about Master Atris?" she cried in incredulity.

"What, that Atris enjoys the company of other women, little girls especially?" Revan replied. "Why do you think that she keeps a gaggle of teenage girls in that academy with her all day, forbids men entry, and _conveniently _forgets to teach them about the Jedi statutes of celibacy? There's more of hand and less of maiden about _them, _certainly."

"I...I...I…"

"Three I's in one sentence? Makes you sound a tad egotistical, doesn't it?" Revan laughed, before sobering. "Let this be a lesson to you, Bastila: the Jedi Masters are not nearly so spic-and-spam as they like to appear. There are literally thousands of zetabytes of reports from my spies chronicling each and every Jedi Master's dirty little secrets. Zhar Lestin's lust for young boys is well-documented. Vrook delights in being suspended from the ceiling. And Vandar… Well, aside from a short-lived and rather unsuccessful stand-up career at a dive on Coruscant, he didn't have much in the way of vices, but I suspect I've made my point."

Bastila's brain finally rebooted, and was assaulted with a cavalcade of 'No'. _He can't be serious…_ she thought. _He has to be lying… He has to be making this up… He _has _to be! I don't care that I don't sense any deception from him! He's tricking me somehow! He's using the Force to aid in his lies! It's a mind-trick! No more than a mind-trick! It _has _to be!_

"And I can see that you don't believe me," Revan sighed. "A pity, but understandable, I suppose. I can't imagine how I would react were I to find that Master Kreia was an exotic dancer in her youth…" Revan visibly shuddered. "Bastila, what would I have to gain by lying to you?"

"My distrust in the Jedi Council?" she returned, cocking her head as she reevaluated the veracity of Revan's vaunted intellect.

"...Let me rephrase. Bastila, what would I gain by lying to you that wouldn't be so much easier to gain were I to tell you the truth?" Revan returned. "Lies are such cumbersome, uncivilised things. They are the true currency of the galaxy, certainly—lies and secrets change hands on a daily, if not hourly basis. But lies are a skein, a stop-gap measure, a patch job. The truth, however, can be as terrible and devastating as it is immutable and unassailable. And beyond that, why would I want you to distrust the Jedi Council? That'd literally only be doing half the job, and marking me for death in the inevitable case that the truth comes to light. I need _allies, _Bastila, not poisoned daggers."

Bastila sighed, and waved her hand for Revan to continue his story. He sighed himself, shaking his head, before moving on.

* * *

_It wasn't precisely difficult to arrange for transport to the closest hub of civilisation on Dantooine. All I had to do, after all, was walk. Day after day I walked as the sun of Dantooine shone upon my back, through days when there was no sun and only a deluge from the skies. I knew what it was to be miserable. I learned what it was to be hungry. To be alone. But a Mandalorian is never helpless—this applies doubly to Jedi—and so I spent my nights in deep meditation, deriving nourishment and sustenance from the Force itself. I know not for how long I travelled from civilisation into the untamed wilds and uncharted plains of Dantooine, for every day seemed to blend into the next. I know, however, that upon reaching the other side of the planet, I was surprised. The area was sparse and lifeless, and there was this pall, the very quintessence of death and dread that hung over the area and choked the will to live from the mightiest beast and the smallest, most timid of shrubs. I came to know that overwhelming feeling as the presence of the Dark Side of the Force._

_ Unlike many Jedi, whose first exposure to the Dark Side was to its nature as seductive and alluring, for me, whose only exposure to the Dark Side was that lifeless, barren hinterland, and who relied on the Force to sustain myself, it was a living nightmare. Death pressed in from all directions, and only scavengers made their meagre livings out there, maugre the lack of all but the occasional corpse. Vultures were too emaciated to fly, tukata too scrawny to hunt, and I, armed only with a stick that had since been fashioned into a crude approximation of a spear, walked abroad in lands that knew not the footfalls of any who was not twisted or maddened by the Dark Side. But where with others, the scavengers might have pounced, me being a child made lean by feeding only through the Force, the sense I got beyond the aura of primeval dread that overshadowed me was a sense of curiosity, of assessment, almost. And thus was a trickle of the Force allowed to remain untainted and unstrangled to reach me, though only enough for my body to sustain itself, no more. It was in such a state, after one long nightmare of crossing those lands, that I came upon that which I knew to be the cave of which Master Kreia spoke._

* * *

"Umm…h-hello?" I called into the gaping maw of the cavernous abyss as I stepped over the threshold. The Dark Side was stronger here than it was beyond the mouth of that primordial abattoir, so thick that it choked the very air that I breathed, causing it to become clotted like the black ichor of a corpse, and a Stygian stagnance rendered it at once viscous and ephemeral. Every step I took increased the weight that pressed down upon me, like each step was a stride closer to my inevitable and unenviable doom.

Despite my initial impressions, however, the cavern was not part of some grandiose underdark, some gate beyond which lay only despair and betrayal—indeed, it took perhaps a quarter-hour for me to steal across the winding corridor to the great chamber that housed the crystal I was sent to obtain. The crystal was open to the air as if upon a throne made from lesser gems, and it was here, oddly enough, that I found the only semblance of peace to be found in those lands of furtive shadow and ravenous, bestial, carrion. I knew not why at the time, and indeed, it was only after having joined the war that I found that every hurricane has an eye of peace and rapprochement at the centre of the storm—the concept seemed quite similar to the practise of standing in the presence of that luminescent jewel.

At any rate, upon finding this seemingly-natural altar, I made my way closer to it, and knelt before it before I began to attempt to clear my mind and send it spiralling throughout the Force. It was in that position that my trial there became abundantly transparent, albeit not at first glance. At first, I thought it some trial of patience or forbearance, for I knelt there in meditation for twelve days, uninterrupted. Here, the Force was strong, and in the eye of the whirling miasma that had strangled the life of that land did I find clarity. Twelve days, nearly two standard weeks I waited there as my mind wandered through the eddies and flows of the Force, and it was only then, as the twelfth sun began to set beyond the horizon, that the inhabitant of the cave came forth and revealed their presence to me. I say 'they' because there is truly no record that exists on any planet in the Known Galaxy, nor in much of the Uncharted Regions, of this being's sex or gender.

The being said nothing, a ghost in the Force, sitting there in much the same position that I was in, also deep in meditation. I became aware of them through their presence in the Force, for though the eye of the storm was a chamber of rapprochement, as I said prior, I could still feel their overwhelming power, and the dark aura they brought with them. "So, are you the being whose presence I have been awaiting?" I asked, so deeply entrenched in meditation that I cared not that this being had the ability to annihilate me with a thought—or perhaps it was through some knowledge of my own that my destruction did not interest them; to this day, I know not the reason why. "I would say that you were nearly two weeks late, but then again, I strongly suspect I would be correct in the assumption that you have been here the entire time, and only now did I notice your presence. I am Kylo Wren, formerly of the Mandalorian clan Wren, Padawan learner under the tutelage of Jedi Master Kreia. Pr…"

I could say no more, for it was as if a great hand seized my throat and forced the air from my lungs. _"What are you doing here? I mean, really. What _are _you trying to accomplish?"_

"Ack...Urgh...Eck…" I sputtered, attempting to engage the being, still convinced that this was simply an advanced trial for Padawans on the cusp of becoming Jedi.

The creature—for to look upon them, there was really no other way to describe their mutilated countenance—simply smiled, and it was a smile that was wretched to look upon, for even through the haze that enshrouded the ghost, I could see that their skin was grey and cracked, and I could feel waves of agony emanating from them, but in emanating, being consumed. It was then that I began to wonder if I had done something wrong, or if this was supposed to be some lesson on why it is not wise to only ever obey, and that I had failed, and was about to die. I did my best to recite the Jedi Code over and over again, a mantra to prepare myself for my own demise—but ultimately, all that stilled my racing heart and prepared me for death was a nursery rhyme I had heard as a child. The memory of it brought me, while perhaps not to peace, certainly into equilibrium.

"_You might want to try something a little different," _the ghost remarked, seeming to be bemused under all the excruciating pain wrapped about them like armour. _"I'm not going to let you breathe until you tell me exactly _what _you are doing here…"_

"Urgh...Orgh...Ungah…" I responded, trying to explain the task onto which I had been set by Master Kreia, and failing, not for lack of trying, but rather for lack of air with which to form words of any kind save the strangled gasps I was managing.

"_Ah… The Crone has sent you…" _the ghost sighed, before the hand around my throat relented, and I dropped to the floor on all fours, gasping for breath. _"Well, why did you not simply say so?" _

"I _did…_" I replied once I had the presence of mind to attempt to regain my composure.

"_Really? All I heard was a lot of blathering, followed by an awful lot of choking…" _the ghost remarked, seeming once again bemused. _"Also, on a side note, you've got one hell of a set of pipes, kid."_

Shaking my head at this, I went back into my seated position as the other did the same on the opposite side of the crystal formation. Choosing another subject, I asked instead, "You know Master Kreia?"

"_...By another name, admittedly, but yes,"_ the Force ghost replied ominously, and I sensed it to be unwise to pursue such a line of inquiry with them, at least at this point in time. _"Now, if she sent you, we had best be getting to your instruction."_

I nodded. "Of course, Master…?" I left the syllable hanging and unfinished in the attempt to gain some form of a name from the entity I believed to be a long-dead Jedi Master.

"_It matters little," _the ghost replied dismissively, and then plucked the crystal from atop its throne. _"I assume you came looking for this, then?"_

"It matters little," I replied—and it occurs to me that I was a rather…brash sort in my youth, callow and without fear.

"_Right then, up you go," _the ghost sighed, and once again, I was in the air and gasping for breath as the phantom hand once more seized my throat. _"Having said that, I _do _like you, kid. You're certainly a spirited little sprat, aren't you?"_

"Ack!" I gasped, keeping my hands away from my throat—I knew even then that when you're being choked, the neck is the one place where your hands are the least useful. However, I ought to note that I was growing more and more certain that this wasn't a Jedi Master of old I was contending with. A trifling concern at the moment, I'm aware, but back then, I was not exactly the picture of calm under fire.

"_...And we're just now coming to the conclusion that I am Sith…" _the Force ghost chuckled. _"A little slow on the uptake, aren't you, kid?"_

Just behind my survival instinct in the queue of thoughts to enter my head was confusion—what _is _Sith?

"_Peace...is a lie…" _the Sith recited. _"There is only Passion."_

That phrase sent my mind into even further confusion. Did not the Jedi teach that there is no passion, but that there was serenity? What was this… this 'Sith' person on about?

"_Through Passion, I gain Strength. Through Strength, I gain Power," _the Sith continued, and at that point, I knew I was certain that this person was _not _a Jedi. It was then that the Sith finally let me down onto my feet. _"What is it that the Force is whispering into your ear right now?"_

I was on all fours for a little while, coughing and gasping for air like I had just returned from a swim on the surface of Manaan. "'Through Power...I gain Victory… And through Victory, my chains are broken…'" I responded with some difficulty.

"_And so, kid, just how are you going to take this from me?"_ the Sith asked, waggling the violet crystal in front of their face like a fob.

An idea popped into my head, a final line whispered to me on the cusp of the wind. "The Force...shall set me free…!" I cried, lifting up my arm and using the Force to pull the crystal into my grasp, and once it hit my hand, time seemed to slow for me, and the Mandalorian battle-frenzy was upon me at once. Without conscious thought and simply by instinct, I drove my feet into the dirt of the cave floor and bolted, the Force making my feet swift and fleet, though I came to a stop beyond the threshold. I thought to go for my spear, but immediately realised that this foe was beyond mundane weapons, and that spears were no more use there. And so I recited the Resol'nare as the Force whispered the other code, the darker aria into my ear, and settled into a hand-to-hand combat stance.

The Sith's first attack was to take my makeshift spear and launch it at me like a javelin, which I managed to catch with the Force, if only barely. Indeed, the head of the spear was not so much as a millimetre from my face when the Force did halt its advance. The problem was, however, that the Sith was also using the Force, and so the piece of wood tipped with flint was held there for a moment, coming slowly closer and closer as my opponent toyed with me. When the inevitable happened and the spear shattered, I was blasted backwards, hitting the ground hard as I did my best to regain my footing in the same motion, discarding my shredded robes and taking my stance again.

* * *

"Wait, wait, wait," Bastila interjected. "You mean to tell me that at the age of seven—"

"Eight," Revan corrected.

"Eight—at the age of eight, you managed to _survive an encounter with an ancient Sith Lord?_" she stated in disbelief.

"I never said they weren't toying with me," Revan replied with a wry smirk in his tone. "Now, where was I…"

* * *

The wraith-like Sith Lord did not chase me, but simply walked out of the cave to find me ready and prepared for a hand-to-hand fight. They smirked, taking their own battle-stance, and simply waiting, doing nothing while I waited for them to make the first move. _"Here's how this is going to work, kid. You have fifteen seconds to stop me. In those fifteen seconds, I will not dodge, I will not attack, I will not move. However, if by the end of those fifteen seconds I am not incapacitated, I will hit you once, and we will then proceed to the next round. We go until one of us is, as I have said, incapacitated. Do you understand?" _

I nodded slowly, never taking my eyes off of the Sith Lord.

"_Good. I knew there was a reason I liked you," _they said genuinely. _"Now, come on. Don't be shy. Fifteen seconds starts…_now_." _

I didn't believe them at first, and so I took a more cautious approach than what I would have otherwise attempted…

* * *

"You charged them," Bastila guessed with a deadpan expression.

"Oh, Force, head-bloody-on," Revan replied with a chuckle.

* * *

As I was saying, and as you so…_poignantly _deduced, I charged the Sith Lord head-on with a wordless battle-cry. I put all my weight behind a punch to the Sith's solar plexus, or at least, that's what I was aiming for. And using the Force to augment my strength, not only did I hit, but the Sith's stony skin fractured in all directions, radiating from the crater my fist had left behind. It didn't even stagger them, and they just kept walking, counting down the seconds. I was counting myself, and after my first punch, I tried another, and another, until I began to fall into the rhythmic routine of the Mandalorian battle-dance—figuratively translated, of course; to translate it literally would have me uttering the words "crane-fish-to-water-drown"—with every Force-augmented punch creating more craters in the Sith's body.

And then fifteen seconds ran out, and saw me laid out on the ground, nursing a new and improved concussion to the point where vision became difficult, painful for me. I tried to blink it away, but only succeeded in washing my right eye red with the blood that dripped from the nearly-fatal wound on my head.

When my heart stopped pounding in my ears, muting all other sounds, I heard the Sith counting down again, and they had already hit ten when I was finally able to attempt to regain my footing. My chest heaving as I tried to force air into my lungs, I wiped the blood off of my forehead and tried to focus on what I had done, focusing on fighting smarter and not harder. Each of my hits had landed, and the Sith had kept their word, not having moved save to strike me. The damage I had done to their stony skin was irrefutable, but it seemed they no longer cared about the fact that their flesh was petrified and was now being stripped away. It was a terrifying sort of indifference that the Sith exhibited, and I'm not going to lie—in that moment, I knew true fear.

Deciding to press what I tried to convince myself was my advantage, I went up once more, seeking to further damage that which I had, by rights, already destroyed. That, as you can doubtless imagine, did not go very well, and by the end, I was on the ground again. It was on the sixth round, seventy-five seconds after the fight had begun, that I found myself nearing defeat. I was worn and weary, injured almost to the point of incapacitation. When I stood, I swayed on unsteady legs. When I looked at anything illuminating, it was as if there was a polesaber shoved into my eye. My left arm was broken, my left ankle sprained—I was in no condition to continue fighting. And yet...and yet I couldn't lose. That wasn't an option. Death, failure, to never see Meetra, my one and only friend, ever again—these were not options. I would not allow them to happen, not under any circumstances. But it was then that the Force failed me at last. I had exhausted myself, and was sustaining myself by way of my determination and my resolve, pure of purpose, and I found I could draw no more on the Light Side to aid me.

It was then that the Dark Side beckoned. It came not as a seducer, nor as a dominator, but as an old friend, offering aid in return for my passion, for my bloodlust, my need to survive and to thrive. And it was then that I touched it for the first time—I let it fill me, and while it was at first black and oily like a petrol spill, in short order it became warm, welcoming, even as frost began to form on the ground and rocky overhangs around me in all directions. I walked forward for the last round, and at the advice of the Dark Side, the saccharine, androgynous voice of that virulent corruption who introduced himself as Boga, I waited.

I waited as the Sith looked on, bemused. I waited as they continued counting down. When it got down to three, I raised my hand, and concentrated as Boga instructed me on what to do. I imagined a phantom hand wrapping around the Sith's throat, and I imagined it crushing their throat, exerting pressure on their larynx and compressing their lungs until they could breathe no more. And as I felt the Dark Side flowing through me, it was at once exhilarating and terrifying—it was undoubtedly one of the best feelings I had had in my young life, but I could sense a hidden malevolence… And suddenly, I understood—I understood why what I was doing was so dangerous. The Dark Side was addictive, like a spiritual narcotic, and once you used it enough, you would never be able to stop.

The Force-choking technique I used was not nearly as powerful nor as effective as the one the Sith had used on me, but mine at least gave the Sith Lord pause, and then they smiled. It was this that confused me, and made me lose my hold on the Dark Side, as it then flooded out of my body, leaving me feeling drained and empty, and so very cold…

When I awoke, I was alone, wrapped in my tattered robe as snow began to fall. The violet crystal, clasped in my hand, was pulsating with warmth and light, which was honestly how, I believe, I survived out there without suffering hypothermia or frostbite. My body ached, but I found that I had healed the damage done. And so I got to my feet unsteadily, leaning against a nearby stone, and then began my long journey back to the Jedi Enclave, leaving the cave behind me, and to this day, I have yet to revisit it.

* * *

Bastila sat in stunned silence. "You...what? You faced down the spectre of an ancient Sith Lord, and they just let you _leave?_"

"Believe me, I was as confused on the subject then as you are now. I could not believe that that had happened—at least, until I discovered the secrets of the Trayus Academy when I was on Dromund Kaas…" Revan replied, gravely serious.

"And…what was the name of this Sith Lord who simply let you go?" Bastila asked, still reeling in incredulity.

Revan sighed. "Their name was Darth Sion."

_**To be continued… **_


	5. Chapter 04

Bastila awoke to a hand shaking her shoulder gently, starting her upright to look upon Belaya, a fellow Padawan and, she remembered, Juhani's friend and rumoured lover. Bastila looked down at the holopad she was reading from, and groaned in dismay when she realised she was reading from a complete register of all known Sith Lords. She remembered vaguely that she had not found so much as a passing mention of Darth Sion, and yet the less she found on the Sith, the more she came to believe Revan's fantastical tale to be true. After all, despite the Force spirit he spoke of defying _all _of the known rules concerning entities corrupted by the Dark Side, there was a nagging sensation that tugged at her through her connection to the Force that made her lend credence to his story with each passing hour.

Regardless, she sighed and stood from her studies, noticing that the Dantooine sun was climbing its way forth from the horizon, and lethargically returned the files to where they belonged in the archives before walking back to the mess hall. There, she sat in the corner of the large chamber, eating alone—for who amongst the Padawans would approach the only Jedi to sit in with Darth Revan and live to tell the tale?

The whisperings about the room tugged at her connection to the Force, and when she surreptitiously looked up every so often, she could identify a significant portion of Learners who stared at her as she ate, exchanging gossip and rumours that seemed to increasingly concern her and her relationship with the captive Sith Lord. Eventually, sufficiently irked, she stood, gathered food for Revan, and left the mess hall behind her, descending once more to the cell where the Dark Lord of the Sith in exile sat, a stylus in hand as he seemed to…_draw _something upon the surface of the holopad he held—likely a concession of the Jedi Council as a reward for having yet to kill Bastila.

Bastila stood there, not wanting to disturb Revan as his hands worked away at what he was drawing, but she was not subtle enough, it seemed. "Bastila, dear, you know that it's rude to stare, correct?" he asked, exasperation in his tone, which was devoid of its usual playfulness. "Come and sit. I'm almost done."

"I…brought you food," Bastila replied carefully, moving slowly to do as her charge bade. "I've already eaten, after all, and…"

"And you did not once ask yourself whether or not the Jedi Council had someone else bring food to me when they brought the holopad?" Bastila stilled, speechless, until Revan sighed. "Not to worry, they did no such thing. The Council is made up of idiots, one and all, but even they know not to interfere with a rapport between an interrogator and their captive."

Bastila flinched, her mind reeling in shock as she tried to discern what had changed between the previous day and the current one that had him acting so churlishly towards her, not at all the charming, joking man she had come to know. _What else do I not know about this man? _she asked herself as she did finally sit and surrender the tray of food to the distracted Sith Lord.

Reaching out with the Force as her curiosity overrode her sense of propriety, she took in his aura, and while he was as much a nexus of Dark Side Force energy as ever, his personality read as being exhausted, and regretful, with sorrow choking his every breath. This was not the brash, cocky Padawan that came to be called the Revanchist, and nor was it the cold, violent Sith Lord that had tried to kill her twice now. This was new, the veteran general, the acclaimed war hero, the sleep-deprived man that had been torn asunder by war, leaving gaping wounds in his psyche that were plugged and knit shut by tendrils of the Dark Side. It seemed to her as though that was what was keeping him from dropping dead from all of the weight he was carrying on his shoulders. The fact that anyone could become so intimately linked with the Dark Side of the Force that they felt comfortable relying on it to the extent that Revan did was a terrifying prospect.

"It's rude to go poking about in people's Force aura, but I'll let it slide at the moment," Revan remarked absently, making Bastila freeze up. "It's Meetra, by the way."

"Pardon?" Bastila asked as she quickly made to compose herself once more.

"Meetra Surik. Her birthday would have been today. Her twenty-seventh," Revan replied by way of explanation. "The death of a loved one often leaves only a temporary pain, and in time, the memories that once brought so much joy and sorrow begin to fade. And so, on this day, every year since the Council murdered her, I draw her face so that I might never forget what she looked like."

"Dwelling on the past brings only pain and misery," Bastila objected gently.

"It does not matter to me. Indeed, if the pain and misery are all I have left of her, then I will treasure and cherish them until my dying day," he replied quietly. He then swung his head around and stared into her, yellow glowing eyes penetrating through her flesh and seemingly into her very soul. "I don't ever want to forget her as everyone else has. I don't want to wake up one morning only to find that I have forgotten why I fight in the first place."

And in a flash of comprehension, Bastila understood. "She is what keeps you from falling even further into the Dark Side—what keeps you from losing control of yourself."

Revan nodded and turned back to his drawing. "My love for her is undying. It fuels my rage, my hatred, but love stays my hand when I look over the precipice and prepare to trade what little humanity I have left for power. Alek—_Malak_—has made that trade, and his is not a condition I wish to adopt anytime in the near future." He chuckled. "It's almost funny. The Jedi tell you to forsake attachments, for they lead to the Dark Side. As with much of their more lucid foolishness, while not entirely false, it is not entirely true, either. Love is fuel. Love is power. Love is the lifeline that keeps us from falling haplessly into the abyss that would otherwise consume anyone who has ever dabbled in the Dark Side, anyone who has ever succumbed to its seductive allure. Know this, Bastila. There is only one thing that the Jedi and I agree on, and it is that the Dark Side is dangerous. Without a grounding force, you _will _lose yourself to it."

Bastila reflexively made to contest that point, but thought better of it. She was not an idiot to believe something when overwhelming evidence to the contrary presented itself. Revan was a prime example of the success of his grounding force, as he called it, and before she could think to understand, she found herself wondering how things might work for her.

"I genuinely have no idea," said Revan, and Bastila found to her shock that she had uttered the query aloud. Revan set the holopad down and turned to her, his piercing gaze focused on her with undivided attention. "So tell me about yourself, Bastila, and perhaps we might find the answer together."

So she told him. Told him about her father, and about her mother, and about her life as a child before the Jedi Order had come to collect her, Force-sensitive as she was. Told him about the arguments, and the endless search for greater and greater treasures, spurred on by her mother and her avarice such that time ran out for her before she had ever really gotten to know her father, and Revan sat, listening carefully to every word that passed from her lips and nodding at times to show that he was still listening, still paying more attention to her than the other Jedi she knew, even those she considered friends. Bastila even found herself searching her brain for other things to tell him, things she had never told anyone else before and likely never will again. She trusted Revan for some reason, believed that he would keep her secrets, even if nobody else would. He had shared so much of himself, after all, that it seemed only right that she would likewise unburden herself onto an ear lent by someone she was coming to the realisation that she trusted, if not a friend in and of himself, as a confidante.

"I would caution you against playing such memories so close to the chest," Revan replied after a short while. "Such things are poison to the soul. Hatred is one thing. It is necessary to conduct the Dark Side through one's body. Resentment is quite another. It clouds the judgement and the mind more completely than the Dark Side ever could, and blinds one to differing points of view. So many of these newly fallen Jedi don't understand this, and they become some of the most vile creatures to attend the Sith Academy. That's no small feat."

"If you acknowledge them as vile, then why do you surround yourself with them?" Bastila asked.

"The weak cull themselves and the strong are too useful to be ignored. Yes, even the most vile of creatures have their uses. You will learn this."

"When?" she asked, leaning forward. This was a once in a lifetime opportunity to learn from one of the most gifted, if misguided, Force users in the galaxy. The childlike desire for knowledge she squashed around the Jedi masters resurfaced.

"Very soon, when we go to ground," the Sith Lord replied. "You see, Bastila, I know how these things work even if you don't. In a little while, your lack of progress will be recognised by the Jedi Council. Never mind that these things take time. The more time this takes, the more likely it is that things don't go their way. So they will pull the plug, so to speak, on this whole grand experiment, and turn me over to the Republic so that I can stand trial in the court of public opinion and face a firing squad. It'll be all niceties and pageantry, the senators posturing and preening in attempting to make this a whole pro-Republic propaganda stunt, and I, quite frankly, am rather tired of standing around and letting vermin talk about me like I'm not here."

"So, what are you going to do?" Bastila asked, terrified.

The Sith Lord gave her a flat look in the shadows of his hood. "It's bad manners to ask questions to which you already know the answer. I'm going to escape. And I'm giving you a chance, here, a once in a lifetime chance. Come with me. I'll teach you everything the Jedi refuse to. Help me out of here, or I escape by force. Either way, you'll live, at least at first, but if I have to escape by force, I refuse to take a hostage, and even more so do I refuse to teach that hostage things I would otherwise be inclined to. But if you help me out of here, I will teach you things beyond your wildest imagination, feats that would allow you to dwarf even your masters in power. You have such potential, Bastila, and I despise letting such potential go to waste. Please don't make me do something I despise."

Bastila looked on in shock. Did she just hear what she thought she did? Revan was going to escape! But… Why would he tell her this? The answer was obvious—to make his offer, his single offer, to teach her to reach her potential. Something none of the Jedi were willing to do, because they feared her. Feared her power. And once, she would have agreed with him. But talk of his past and the trust she had placed in him led her to one inescapable conclusion: there were things in the galaxy that she would not, could not be able to face if she were not to accept this offer. Darth Sion was only one of them, and if what Revan said was true, he was still out there. Not to mention…

Not to mention, she might be able to see her father again.

She reached over to the control panel and deactivated the force field containing him. How she knew the code was beyond her, but when she needed it, there it was, whispered into the back of her mind. It was the will of the Force that she should do this, but more importantly, it was _her _will, _her _choice that she had made.

The cell powered down, and Revan looked at her, mirth in his eyes. "We'd best be going, then, little Jedi."

Suddenly, Bastila was overtaken with a wave of _wrongness. _Of misgivings. Was she right to do this? Was it too late to go back?

The answer, of course, was yes.

When Revan stepped out of his cell, each of his footfalls resounded throughout the basement of the enclave, and his stance radiated power. No, _all _of him radiated power, and the Dark Side pulsed as a necrotic heart throughout the gathering place of the Jedi. "Come, Bastila. I need to retrieve my lightsabers and then we're off this Force-forsaken lump of rock. We have work to do if we're going to be able to put Vitiate's defeat into motion. Starting with finding and retrieving my Shadow Hand."

Bastila did not protest. She did not even try. Still… "Vitiate? Who in the Force's name is Vitiate? You never mentioned them!"

"_Him, _albeit loosely," replied Revan. "He is the true enemy, Boga's usurper, the puppet master I must conquer the Republic in order to defeat. I'll continue telling my story on the way, if you like? I imagine we'll be spending quite some time in hyperspace, enough for me to continue, perhaps even to the present day."

"I… I would like that," said Bastila. "But why?"

"You are of infinitely more value as an ally than a servant, and admiration is the emotion furthest from understanding. You must _understand _why I do what I do, and why it is necessary," he replied. Then, he turned away, and took a deep, shuddering breath. "For Meetra."

A pulse of almighty sorrow, rage and pain rippled through the Force, a wave of the most powerful Dark Side Force energy she had ever felt, and instinctively she braced herself. Using the Force, he wrenched the dead-bolted doors open, off of their sliding hinges, and walked out, visibly on the warpath. Bastila followed quickly in an attempt not to be left behind.

On the other side of the door, she saw that the three masters present were assembled in front of a small horde of Padawans, all with their lightsabers drawn.

Revan chuckled. "All this time and you're still so afraid of me that you need to put an army in my way to stem my advance?"

Vrook spoke first. "We do not fear you!"

"Then you will die braver than most," Revan replied wryly. "Tell you what, Vrook, since you like your little games _so much._"

Vrook winced at that.

"Let's play a game. That game is called 'how much of your flock must I cull before you stand aside and let me and my lovely assistant go,'" said Revan affably. "I kill your Padawans until you come to your senses and realise that letting me go is not the worst thing you could possibly do, or until they're all dead. Whichever comes first."

"You are a vile murderer and we shall not let you past!" cried Master Lamar. Suddenly, Vrook grasped at his throat as he began to rise into the air.

"Vile murd…! I say, how rude you've become in your dotage, Vrook," replied Revan, lifting a hand into the air in tandem with Vrook's levitation. "Everyone dies. I as a soldier know that better than most. Honestly, I only choose the time and place for a few. Like you. Right here. Right now."

With that, Revan closed his grip and Vrook's body just seemed to crumple in on itself. Revan then cast his hand to the side, and Vrook flew into the wall with a sickening crunch. The Sith Lord brought Vrook's lightsaber to him. "Excellent work, Vrook. The balance could use some adjustment, and the craftsmanship leaves much to be desired, but for a Jedi's lightsaber that is built to prioritise function over form, it really is a work of art in its own way. A shame, really, that it's come to this."

Revan touched the activation plate with a _snap-hiss, _igniting the lightsaber and causing it to rise into the air, before spearing itself through the centre of Vrook's head.

Immediately, a chorus of _snap-hiss _came to life as the Padawans and Zhar ignited their lightsabers. Revan turned to them dispassionately. "You could have stopped me. Any of you could have stopped me from killing him. But you didn't, and now one of the Jedi Masters is dead and gone—oh, sorry, 'one with the Force.' You teach divorcing yourselves from emotion, but really, all you insignificant children are is afraid. Even the great Master Vandar Tokare is so paralysed with fear of me that he didn't even attempt to stop his friend from dying. Not that it wouldn't have been funny to see him try. Funnier than any of his jokes, at any rate. Are these the cowards that I fought for, that _Meetra _fought for, and _was murdered _for?! You disgust me. All of you. Come, Bastila. They won't stop us. They haven't the temerity."

Revan walked forth briskly and parted the sea of Padawans, but one stopped him.

Belaya, with a battle cry, struck forward and slashed downwards at him from above with her blue Guardian lightsaber. Revan simply lifted a hand and her lightsaber halted its descent, but this was the call to action as the Jedi converged on him. He sighed, and spread out his arms as if parting a curtain, and they slammed into the wall, stuck there like insects on a windshield. All but Zhar Lestin and Vandar Tokare.

"Hasty, Vrook was. Like him, we are not," said Vandar. "Fighters, we are not. Suicide it would be, to stand in your way. Have need of us, the Jedi do."

"You're correct in that, at least," said Revan. "I believe Atris is still on her way, is she not? Zez-Kai Ell and Kavar still in hiding from my inquisitors dogging their every step? Vrook was the only hope you had, and in his arrogance, he signed his own death warrant."

Bastila was still in shock. The sheer power that Revan had, even diminished as he was, was staggering. She could feel it pulsating off of him. Then she sensed something. She looked up. "Revan!"

"Treachery?!" Revan roared as he looked up to see Master Dorak descending on him from above, his lightsaber ignited and ready to bifurcate the Sith Lord. Revan held a hand up and stopped him cold, and then held him there. Master Zhar ignited his lightsaber and Master Vandar followed suit, their green plasma blades glowing in the darkness of the corridor as they moved to engage the helpless Revan. Bastila was moving before she knew what she was doing, igniting her own double-bladed lightsaber and thrusting it upward to block both blades as they pressed in on her. She felt bound in their trap, and the Jedi immediately began to assail her mind with all the Force energy at their disposal.

_Your legs are too wide. Parade rest._ Revan's voice in the Force, from the back of her mind, calmed her disquiet. _Relax your hands, and remember your hybrid form. Now!_

Bastila spun her lightsaber and threw both the Jedi Masters off balance, thrusting her blade through one, and then the other. Neatly, cleanly. Like surgery.

Their eyes widened, and they staggered back, clutching their chests as identical expressions of horror crept across their faces. She spun her double-bladed lightsaber around her body and over her head, and then slashed across her body, beheading the paedophilic Zhar and then twisting it end-over-end to split Vandar's head in half.

_Good, _sent Revan, and Bastila went to her knees, deactivating her lightsaber and seeing nothing but terror in the eyes of those she had once called her friends, peers and colleagues. Tears began to sting in her eyes.

_What have I done?!_

Revan used the Force to rip Dorak in half, his blood spraying across the corridor and falling on Bastila like an anointing rain. He walked past her, and looked over his shoulder, saying, "When you're ready to be an adult again, and take me up on my offer, there is a planet not far from here. It is called Taris. I have a few old enemies, and so I really ought to start out on my journey on that world. Should you find yourself there, well… You know what to do."

With that, Revan turned away and walked toward the open sky, leaving Bastila behind him, with only the portrait of a dead woman to mark that his time on Dantooine had ever been anything but bloodshed and death.

* * *

The woman took a deep breath, shaking herself limber one more time. Garbed in rags, she was nonetheless covered enough to survive the harsh Tatooine suns high above, the heat beating down on the blood-sands and giving the illusion of flowing water. As a gladiatrix, she never needed for water or food; after all, a half-starved gladiator could not fight. She stepped out onto the blood-sands in her wrapped boots, the sand getting everywhere between her toes everywhere her feet stepped. There was a Gamorrean on the opposite side of the arena, the classic gladiatorial combatant for the Hutts' sick games, and he heaved a massive battle-axe into his hands, ready to take her on. The gladiadrix was unarmed, because everyone there knew how dangerous she was armed. The poor dumb swine across the way wouldn't stand a chance against her were she armed, and that would make for poor sport indeed. There had been a small stint where she had managed to kill Bendak Starkiller, a Mandalorian on loan from the Tarisian gladiatorial ring, with a vibroknife, and that had caused quite the uproar, so this was more or less a routine match.

This was her one chance to try and reconnect to the Force. She knew that she risked her beloved finding her every time she tried this, but with word of her death, she knew that he wouldn't look for her. He believed her long dead, and one doesn't search for a dead woman.

The Gamorrean squealed and charged, and she sidestepped the goring tusks that were aimed directly at her. _That's one. _She felt something like an Alderaanian matador in what she was doing, dodging a tusked creature with the power to pulverise her body so much that not even her beloved would recognise her corpse were she to make a misstep. So she didn't, and with her unwillingness to make mistakes, she had made her employer, Dodoga the Hutt, a great deal of capital, both political and financial. Bendak Starkiller really had been a bit of a coup, the best fighter in recent memory from a trade centre and Exchange hotbed like Taris taken down by a relative unknown from a backwater world like Tatooine.

She was so distracted thinking of Bendak Starkiller that she nearly killed the Gamorrean as it came at her again. She managed to swing off of its tusks and to its other side without hurting it, but that was a close call. _That's two. _The idea of good sport in gladiatorial combat revolved around playing with one's opponent. It wasn't a fight so much as a carefully choreographed dance, a despicable practise for despicable creatures with despicable tastes—so it came as no surprise that the Hutts had invented it. Still, it paid the bills and kept her skills sharp, so she had very few complaints about her current occupation.

All the same, it was becoming time to leave. She was beginning to feel the Force again, a whisper of a whisper of a whisper of her former power, but it was returning to her. News had reached even distant Tatooine that Darth Revan had survived his captivity at the hands of the Jedi Order and was now at large, and she could picture the right panic that Malak would be in at the idea that Revan was coming for him.

_Poor Alek,_ she thought to herself as she caught the Gamorrean's axe in her hands, forcing it to the side and letting it impact into the ground hard enough to kick up quite the plume of sand. _What happened to you? You and Revan both? What did you find in the Unknown Reaches that changed you both so very much?_

The Gamorrean went to head-butt her, so she jabbed it in the throat, causing it to wheeze as its air flow suddenly went haywire. She then closed its solar plexus with a well-placed strike, and then kneed it in the chest, causing it to bend over, whereupon she slammed both interlocked hands into the back of its neck. The Gamorreans were known for having strong spines, so she was in no danger of killing it, but it still hurt.

She walked around the wheezing Gamorrean, watching as the crowd chanted, somehow in unison despite the wide variety of languages they all spoke. She looked to Dodoga, and the crowd gasped as the Gamorrean charged her from behind, but she kept her eyes focused on Dodoga until she saw him smile and nod. It was not a nice smile, not that it ever was with Hutts, but all the same it was what she needed. She backflipped at the last second, grabbing the Gamorrean by the tusks and then swinging her body around its throat, her momentum twisting its neck and snapping its spine with a sickening crack that was audible throughout the suddenly silent colosseum.

The squealing boar-man went to the ground with flailing, twitching death throes, but it was dead. It was done.

The crowd at once broke into uproarious cheering.

Later, when she was beneath the blood-sands, washing herself off in a bathtub filled with cold water and imported ice, a luxury almost to the point of being gauche on Tatooine (but then again, what were the Hutts if not extraordinarily gauche), her lover approached her. Visas Marr was her name, a Miraluka slave girl who idolised the woman's every move, everything about her. The woman thought little and less of her; there was one and only one being, after all, in all the galaxy, indeed, in all the universe whom she would ever love, and he was nowhere near Tatooine at the moment. Not that the woman did not take advantage of Visas and indulge in the pleasures of her flesh, of which Visas was only too eager to give, but it was empty, physical, the pure exertion of her will upon an admittedly beautiful and supple young girl, willing almost to a manic degree of desperation to feel the woman's touch upon her.

Visas, like all Miraluka, was entirely open to the Force, and so was drawn into her spider's web like the most exquisitely boring fly. The woman leeched carefully from her through sex, cautiously restoring her own connection to the Force by way of cannibalising it from the young, impressionable slave girl. But she was resting, so Visas's intrusion was already irritating her, and it was soon time to go. Revan was out there, and she _had _to find him; and in order to do that, she would need to finally finish reestablishing her connection to the Force.

"Mistress, may I wash your back?" Visas asked innocently, fidgeting as her proximity to the woman's nudity began to cause her naked body to show signs of arousal, from the slickness of her thighs to the blush on her cheeks. How Visas saw her was always a mystery to the woman, seeing as she knew full well that she was a wound in the Force, and the Miraluka saw through the Force, but the woman found she didn't rightly care to unravel that particular mystery right now. Her departure was much more important at this juncture.

"You may," said the woman as Visas reached for the sponge, reaching up and brushing the woman's long hair back. She had used to wear it short during her days as a Jedi, just as she had once been a blonde. Both had been fixed, as keeping her natural appearance would have drawn too much attention to herself. Now her hair was, as stated, long, and it had been dyed a dark brown, far from the lustre of her natural pale golden blonde, but it kept her from being recognised, and so she considered it a success, much to the chagrin of her vanity. Her skin was tanned from the years she had spent in Dodoga the Hutt's employ, but nothing could be done to hide the vibrant blue of her eyes, the blue that Revan had loved so much.

Back when he was Kylo, and she Meetra.

Back when she was not the Exile and he was not the Dark Lord of the Sith.

Back in those halcyon days when things were simple and they were in love, and not embroiled in a war that would change them both in ways neither of them fully understood once they had embarked, along with Alek, on that dark path to the war that claimed the life of the woman she had once hoped would be her mother-in-law. The war that claimed her beloved's innocence, breaking him beyond what she could fix. Of all the casualties of that war, those two were what caused her to shed tears still when she thought of them.

"Mistress, is there something wrong?" Visas asked, and Meetra realised that she was crying. Again. The night they shared after Cathar, when Kylo had come to her so completely broken and wanting her, _needing _her, was probably the saddest night of her life. That was the night the boy she knew and loved so very deeply had died, and the inhuman symbol of "Revan" had taken his place, but ever since that night, Cassus Fett's Cathar Massacre always brought her to tears. It was there that her beloved had found that damnable mask, behind which he had hidden, more than simply his face, his very heart, becoming hard, cold and callous, driven by a lust for revenge to acts of untold destruction.

And she had followed him as he fell further and further, until Malachor V and her exile.

And then he had disappeared. Him and Alek both.

She set her jaw firmly. That wouldn't be her. She would find Revan and find out what happened in undiscovered space that had affected him so profoundly. Then she would do her best to save him and Alek both. She wouldn't let her beloved fall into the dark oblivion that awaited him at the end of his path—while she could live apart from him, she could not, _would not, _live without him. She refused.

"No, Visas," she replied with a huff of resolution. "No, I'm quite alright."

"If there's anything I can do for you, Mistress, anything at all…" the Miraluka girl began.

A smirk crossed Meetra's face. "Well, Visas, actually, there _is _one thing you can do for me."

"Name it!" she cried eagerly, dropping the sponge into the icy bathwater.

"There is something I must do," Meetra said gravely as she turned around in the bath, reaching up and grabbing the Miraluka by the chin and lifting her sightless eyes to meet her own—a purely symbolic gesture, but by the way Visas's breath caught, she knew that it did not go unnoticed. "And I know not if I have the strength to do it. Will you help me?"

"Of course!" Visas replied.

Meetra took her hand and placed it over Visas's breast, where her heart was located, and she could feel it beating, fluttering like a hummingbird's, but strong. Meetra felt Visas's hand close over her own, holding it there. She sighed, took a breath in, and said in a quavering voice, "Thank you, Visas."

With that, she reached deep inside herself, the part of her that had been an insatiable void ever since Malachor V, and she _pulled._

She left Visas there, on the ground, breathing shallowly as the last of her life force ebbed out of her, her strong heartbeat fading fast. Meetra got out of the bath, her ability to use the Force restored, and she walked over to the wardrobe, garbing herself in her old, threadbare Jedi robes, and gathering her effects. She took the credit chit with all of her winnings on it, and packed it into her bag, before leaving the colosseum's dormitories for Anchorage, where she knew she would find something of Revan's, and perhaps clues as to find something of her own that was taken from her when she was expelled from the Order—the whereabouts of the doomed woman who loved her, the Jedi Master Atris, and thus, her lightsaber. Then and only then could she storm the fortress her beloved had built around his heart; then and only then could she find if the man she loved was even still alive.

Thus did Meetra Surik leave Dodoga the Hutt's colosseum, his employ, and his service.

* * *

Bastila Shan paced in her cell in the Republic capital ship's prison hold. Even treacherous Jedi were afforded adequate quarters, after all, an insistence of the Jedi Order against the increasing corruption of the Galactic Senate. After all, the one thing the Jedi feared above all else was the perception of their own obsolescence. This was one of the conclusions Bastila had reached through her meditations, given that there was little and less to do in her cell as they made the long and perilous journey through Sith-controlled hyperlanes to Coruscant, the galactic seat of power itself; one of the conclusions she reached since her lightsaber was kept in a secure safe across the room from her. Granted, very few things could truly stop a Force user save for another Force user, but she let her saberstaff rest there. She needed to think, and this was as good a time as any, and, to be honest, a sight better than most.

The one thing she thought of most of all, however, was the most perplexing thing she had seen throughout the entirety of the journey, which was, of course, the small pyramid that sat on the floor, untouched and unopened, in front of her. It was black and inscribed with scarlet markings, obviously Sith in origin, but how it had come into her possession and why was a mystery to her. Even more mysterious was how none of the guards seemed to notice it, as though their attention slid completely off of it and to something else, as though something deep in their subconscious minds didn't _want _to notice it. This only continued to reinforce her idea that the pyramid was something she had only ever heard of, in the form of a Sith holocron.

Unlike Jedi holocrons, which only ever held massive amounts of information on any given topic, Sith holocrons were created through Sith alchemy, and thus served as anchors for the souls of their creators. It was a form of immortality, and many an ancient Sith Lord had found a way to return themselves to life by way of possessing the bodies of those poor unwary souls unfortunate enough to come across them and foolish enough to open them. And so she kept her hands and the Force away from it as much as she could, simply examining the pyramid from the outside. It didn't take long, forever, for her to grow frustrated with the lack of progress she was making in deciphering the Sith runes. She had never learned the notation used by the kind of Sith alchemist canny enough in their art to create a Dark Side holocron, and now she was kicking herself for never asking for access to Master Kreia's notes on such things, or even Master Atris's writings on the dangers of holocrons that she had written before fleeing for the secret facility at Telos. Then she might be having some headway in deciphering the meaning of the inscriptions on the holocron.

Finally, she gave up, and she levitated the holocron and turned it over to look on its bottom, to see if the key was there. And on the bottom, in Galactic Basic, were the words "Touch Me." She sighed, put the holocron down, and touched the tip of it gingerly. She hissed as her finger was pricked, and the runes on the holocron lit up as her blood was taken into it. The pyramid split apart, and in the centre there was a little dome that began to glow a vibrant scarlet, before a small hologram of Revan stood from it.

"Ah, Bastila. It is good to see you have developed a healthy suspicion of Jedi and their incessant warnings. Though I ought to caveat that by saying that you really should not have done what you did. Jedi are wrong about many things, but they are correct in saying that _Sith artefacts are inherently dangerous. _There are no end to the things that the Sith will do to maintain their power and safeguard their knowledge," said Revan as he began to pace. "But yes, where were we… Ah! We were on our way back from the cave on the other side of Dantooine, weren't we? But before we do that, I see I have a rather captive audience. I'm not too fond of those, so why don't we liven things up a bit? Escape and head to Korriban. That's where I'm really headed. Let the Jedi and their underlings scour Taris for a while. That cesspit ought to be destroyed in my personal opinion. But yes, escape even if you have to kill all that stand in your way. That is your first trial, my new apprentice. Then I will continue our story on the way to the Sith homeworld. Well, the first one, anyway. I'd have to be an idiot to direct you to Dromund Kaas."

Bastila nodded as the hologram went away, flickering off. The holocron closed and sealed itself shut as she got up and focused, concentrating on finding the control panel. It was fingerprint-locked, but that didn't matter. She focused on her lightsaber, ignited it, and then instantaneously sent it flying towards the control board. She had to catch up with Revan. She was no longer a Jedi, after all, and that meant that the Dark Side would soon come to claim her. She might as well become a Sith in the vein of Revan instead of becoming a raging monster that was hell-bent on a course towards unknown self-destruction.

The container overloaded and powered down, and she could sense numerous Force signatures headed directly for her. The guards. She pocketed the holocron and went directly for her lightsaber, extinguishing it and then reigniting it into her guard stance. Sensing danger, she looked up and indeed saw that gas was beginning to get pumped into the area. She strode forth towards the door and stuck her ignited lightsaber into it, beginning to cut a human-sized hole in the bulkhead before her lungs were inundated with sleeping gas, or even worse, poison gas. She didn't know if they intended to kill her, but a strange calm settled over her as she cut her way through the door, kicking through the bulkhead's cut section as it fell over and she walked out.

"Open fire!" cried the man she assumed to be the guard captain. Trask, she remembered was his name, and this ship was the _Endar Spire. _Well, she wanted out. "Open fire, you—!"

He clutched his throat as he could no longer breathe, Bastila's hand closing from afar as she Force-choked him until he fell to the ground in a heap. She looked around the room and asked a simple question. "Anyone else want to try dying today?"

The Republic troopers lifted their blaster rifles and began to fire. They only got one volley off as Bastila went into Shii-Cho to deflect the bolts of hard-light that were going to slam into her, and then let loose a Force wave to knock them all into the walls hard enough to knock them out. She wasn't Sith enough to kill them all yet.

That done, she walked out of the initial threshold and towards the hangar bay, looking for a hyperspace-capable shuttle. It seemed that all of the troops on the ship, a platoon by the size of them, had all been in the initial wave; that, or the stragglers were making themselves scarce against the rampaging Jedi. She didn't blame them. She'd be scared of her, too, if she wasn't a Jedi. Or, well, former-Jedi now.

Shortly thereafter, she was out of the hangar bay with a stolen shuttle carrying her towards the nearest hyperspace beacon. Setting the shuttle to autopilot, she sat down and pulled the holocron out of her bag, opening it once more and listening as Revan came forth and began to speak.

_**To be continued… **_


	6. Chapter 05

_I __returned to the Dantooine settlement some time later; a year had passed, it seemed, since I had left, and much had changed. Meetra, already several years my senior, was blossoming into a great beauty the likes of which the bards would sing, Alek was no longer fully Vrook's creature, having grown into his own, and both of them had together constructed their own lightsabers on their own. Now, in those days, it was tradition that one would find the materials to construct their lightsaber themselves, but those materials were usually stocked on-world, so it wasn't entirely that difficult to find them. How Master Kreia came to the determination to make this into a trial is a testament to her wisdom; though some would call it sadism, her tutelage pushed me beyond what was expected of me as a Jedi, and thereby allowed me to grow into my true potential as a Force-sensitive._

* * *

"Ah, my young Padawan. Returned from your trial, and bursting with questions, I see. In due time, in due time," said Master Kreia as I walked through the door to our house. "You have the crystal, I trust?"

"Do you think me a fool that I would dream of returning without it?" I countered, holding up the violet lightsaber crystal that had kept me alive on my way back, across the cold and unforgiving darkness-blasted wasteland.

"There are many who have done and have yet to do things quite a bit more foolish than that," she replied with a certain dry humour in her tone. "Good. Now it falls to you to find the rest of the components for your lightsaber."

"I should have expected there would be more to do," I remarked.

"Indeed, you ought to have. And yet you did not. Why _is _that?"

"Point taken," I said, turning and leaving the house.

I walked towards the Jedi enclave to find out what I needed to procure in order to construct a lightsaber, but while I was walking, I passed Master Kavar's home, and I saw Meetra there, training with her own lightsaber and sparring against Alek. I must confess to feeling something of a stab of jealousy through my chest, and it poisoned the early days with Alek before we became friends.

All the same, I supposed it would have been more constructive to cooperate with my fellow Jedi, so I waited there in my threadbare robes, made lean and haggard from my journey, for them to finish their bout. I noticed Meetra had taken the path of the Consular by her green lightsaber, perhaps jockeying for a seat on the Jedi Council. In those days, I thought that I might make my way onto the council myself, and serve her in her capacity as Grand Master of the Order. That, of course, wasn't to be.

Meanwhile, Alek was training with a blue lightsaber, training to become a Jedi Guardian. Later on he would be our breaker in the war, taking on the toughest opponents simply because he could take the most hits out of all of us, and in an all-out brawl, regardless of how good or skilled you are, you are _going _to take hits. He was the first one to notice me, and pointed me out to Meetra. Meetra looked where he was pointing, then back to Alek. I could hear from where I was her shocked, "_Kylo?_"

I felt the worst at that. Had I been replaced in her heart? Had she given me up for dead? Had she really thought I would not return to her even if I had to transcend the veil of death itself to do so? Those thoughts were dashed when she came running at me and bowled me over, kissing me for the first time in my life as she tackled me to the ground. I… If I really try, I can sometimes still feel her lips on mine, like the ghost of a feeling, rarely perceived but when perceived, done so deeply. I… I must confess she remains my weakness, even after all these years. But, to the point at hand.

I was shocked when she did this, stiff, and I can imagine it was not the greatest kiss she had ever received. To this day, I wonder what stolen moments she must have had with Alek during my absence, but we will get to why I wonder that later. She broke into tears against my chest—I was quite tall by then, and she was always rather average in height—and sobbed, blubbering out so many words that I could barely untangle them all. But there was Alek, always the saviour, hauling her off of me and giving me a hand to grasp that I might come to my feet. The first thing I could think of to say, my hair mussed and my eyes, I should think, lending me a rather skittish look, my mind dazed and confused, was "I don't suppose you know how I could go about obtaining Mandalorian _beskar, _do you?"

He cocked an eyebrow, and I elaborated. "For components to a lightsaber."

He nodded sagely, and that was the last thing I felt before my legs gave out beneath me.

* * *

_Some time later, I came to in Master Kavar's dwelling, Meetra looking over me, her beautiful brow furrowed, while Alek worked to calm her._

* * *

"Is he going to be alright?" she quibbled.

"He'll _live,_" Alek replied firmly. "But not if you keep crowding him like that. He needs air."

"And food, and water, and rest. I mean, look at him, Alek! What kind of errand did that witch Kreia have him doing that he came back looking half-dead like this?!"

"It is not our place to question the methods of our masters, and it is _especially _unwise where Master Kreia is involved," Alek said warily. Even then, he shared the other Jedi's deathly terror of all things revolving around my master. "Come, I've got some tea on."

"Wait, he's coming around!" cried Meetra, and surely enough, my eyes flickered open to see Meetra poised above me, and Alek on the opposite side. "Kylo!"

I tried to speak, but my throat was suddenly too dry to make sounds. Alek lifted a canteen of warm water to my lips, and I drank greedily before it was taken away. I glared at him as he chided, "Too much will be a shock to the system."

Begrudgingly, I knew he was correct. At any rate, I could speak then, so I asked Meetra, "Why couldn't I speak at first?"

Meetra shrugged, and Alek responded. "It is because your body has subsisted on the Force and the Force alone for so long that when the flow fluctuated at all, suddenly your body's needs caught up to it. You should by rights be dead, Kylo Ren. I do not know how you survived."

"Disappointed?" I asked, hiding my malice behind a jesting tone.

"Hardly," said he. "It appears you are simply made from sterner stuff than most Jedi, and that is saying something. Now, you were saying something about _beskar_?"

"Yeah, what the kriff is _beskar?_" asked Meetra.

"It's the Mandalorian word for iron," said Alek.

"You want iron for your lightsaber," Meetra said flatly.

"Not just any iron. _Mandalorian _iron," Alek corrected her.

"May _I _have a turn to speak?" I bit out.

"Of course," said Alek.

"Mandalorian iron, or _beskar, _as it's known in Mando'a, is an extremely durable alloy against blaster fire and lightsabers. It dissipates heat very efficiently. Of course, it's not so good against blunt force trauma…"

"Why do you want to use _beskar _for your lightsaber?"

I stopped, and thought about Alek's question. I… I couldn't do it. I couldn't answer, because doing so would reveal far too much about my heritage. I was no longer a Mandalorian child; I was _jetti. _I was Kylo Ren—a civilian orphan from Deralia, and nothing more. "You're right. I suppose it _was _a rather fanciful idea…"

Meetra glared at Alek, and I was silently pleased by that. "Don't worry, Kylo, we'll find you plenty of lightsaber parts."

"But it is tradition that…"

Meetra silenced him with a look. "Come on, Alek, it's time to take Kylo shopping."

"Very well," Alek sighed, hoisting me up gingerly and supporting me on his taller frame as Meetra led the way.

* * *

_As it turned out, picking out lightsaber parts was much like the way many minor orders who believe in reincarnation choose their heads; I was blindfolded and led out into the stockpiles for each part, and made to choose just one that responded to me through the Force. When we were done, we returned to Master Kavar's dwelling, where Meetra got special permission, though I know not how, to watch over me and nurse me back to health in Master Kreia's place. _

_Perhaps it was merely mentioning Master Kreia's trial that brought him around; perhaps he saw an opportunity to remove my master from the Jedi High Council. But it mattered not; the point is that he agreed, and so Meetra and I dwelt in the same house for some time while I regained my strength, and Meetra learned well the ways of the Force from the foremost master of its arts._

_Eventually it came time to construct my lightsaber, and I was forbidden from using my hands for doing this task by Master Kreia herself. She said that I needed to learn to at least dabble in precision, and so, as in all things, it was to her that I listened. It took me a week to construct it properly, but once I did, I saw that it was a work of art that I carry with me to this day. Unfortunately, its unusual hue meant that I had to, for the first time, construct a second lightsaber, one with the green khyber crystal of my chosen path as a Consular. _

_In the end, it was my wish to see Meetra as Grand Master of the Order that brought me into the path of my studies in the Force, but Master Kreia wished not for a Consular of a Padawan, but a true polymath. To her for this I was exceedingly grateful, for it was the case that a true prodigy of the Force could do things a single Jedi Master could not. So it was that I continued training intensively in lightsaber forms under Master Kavar, and Force forms under Master Kreia. By the time we became Jedi Knights in full, I was ready to become an instrument of Meetra's will._

* * *

"Kylo Ren, and his teacher, Master Kreia!" cried out Master Zez-Kai Ell, having taken a trip all the way from Coruscant to oversee Dantooine's graduation ceremony and its proceedings. Unknown to all there, he was also there to investigate suspicions of the very vices I told you your Jedi Masters possessed, and so while this was not the first time I had seen him, given as Master Kreia was to drop me off into the archives while she dealt with important business herself, it was perhaps the first time many of the assembled Jedi had seen him, he of the walrus moustaches.

"Alek Squinquargesimus, and his teacher, Master Vrook Lamar!" he cried out, followed by a pause, which was in turn followed with, "Meetra Surik and her teacher, Master Kavar! These young men and this woman are exemplars of our order. Every test, every trial that was presented them, they surmounted. Their teachers have vouched for them, and believe they are ready to join the Jedi Order in full! And so!"

One by one, me first, then Alek, then Meetra, he took a vibroknife to our Padawan braids and cut loose that single lock of hair that denoted our junior status. I looked out on the crowd stoically, while Meetra looked fit to burst with excitement, and Alek, even, had a small smile on his face. We were each presented with the lightsaber we had crafted, I with my green lightsaber, having stowed my violet one away with Master Kreia, and the other two with their green and blue lightsabers, respectively, by our masters. Through means of legerdemain, she managed to slip me my true lightsaber, and I nodded to her as she did so.

"I, Master Zez-Kai Ell, hereby deputise each of you as Jedi Knights of the Republic! To protect and serve is your charge, never to rule or dominate or control, for these lead to the Dark Side, from which there will be no return."

* * *

_Zez-Kai Ell was correct about one thing: there is no return. Once Boga has you in its grasp, it will never let go, and its reach goes beyond the veil of death. Such is the trade we make to protect those we truly love. Another thing the Jedi are both correct and incorrect about is the toxicity of attachments. Attachments will lead to the Dark Side, save for one. And for each and every person, there is one attachment that may be made that may never be betrayed, nor may it be subverted. It is the sacrament of True Love, and much like the tales tell, it is the most powerful force known to man, more powerful even than the Dark Side of the Force. It is so rare, however, to find one's true love that a person might live a million lifetimes and never find their perfect match. I was beyond lucky, then, or indeed, it might have been the will of the Force, that I found Meetra. The love I lost… And that day, that day was the beginning of the end, for us, for the Mandalorians, and for the Republic as we knew it…_

* * *

Once the ceremony was over, I felt a tugging sensation at the back of my consciousness like I was being pulled along by the Force. In those days, there was known to be a khyber crystal cave some ways off from the Jedi Enclave, but even then, as it is likely now, it was infested by vile kinrath. I knew this, and still I began to move in that direction. It was a siren song that pulled me ever on towards its source, until I heard Meetra call, "Kylo!"

I turned and regarded her at once. "Meetra, you want to do something remarkably stupid?"

"With you? Absolutely," she grinned.

"What are you two scheming about?" asked Alek firmly. "We _just _became Jedi and already you wish to break the rules? I'd expect such behaviour from you, Kylo, but Meetra, really?"

"Well then, you can stay behind, and have the responsibility of telling the Masters where we went, and then have to answer the question about why you didn't try stopping us," said Meetra primly.

"I…" Alek's shoulders fell. "Fine. I'll come with you, if only to keep you two out of trouble."

Meetra and I looked at each other, and there I saw a glimmer of mischief in her eye as she bit down on her lower lip that stabbed me through the heart. We exited the Enclave in the dead of night, then, on our last night before we left for the Jedi Temple on Coruscant, and ran out into the darkness towards the speeder bikes. We had authorisation for them as Jedi Knights, and so we used that authorisation to race towards the kinrath-infested khyber cavern.

I still remember that night. The wind racing through my hair, Meetra's grin spreading ever wider across her face as we got closer and closer, her arms around my waist and her face pressed against my back in the storm of wind that the speeder bikes kicked up—even Alek got caught up in the thrill of it given enough time. It was enchanting, intoxicating—a night to remember.

We got there in good enough time, and parked our speeder bikes by the entrance. Two would avoid more suspicion than three, since Jedi at the time went out in pairs, Master and Padawan. I drew the hilt of my lightsaber into my hand and ignited the green blade with a _snap-hiss, _my other lightsaber at the ready should I need it. Alek's blue plasma blade came out with a similar sound, followed by Meetra's green as well. We padded into the cave, the two males taking point, and indeed, we moved in lock-step, wanting to avoid the jostling for Meetra's favour that would have embarrassed us both mightily. She had no patience for the posturing of men, especially for the posturing of men whom, as Jedi, should really know better.

We went into the cave, stepping lightly and carefully, the sounds of mynocks crying out their echolocation coming out of the mouth of the cavern, the sound and smell of kinrath skittering in the darkness bringing us to the point of caution, but not retreat. We went deeper and deeper in, carefully moving our way through the pitch-blackness and using the Force to guide us onward. Well, that and the dim luminescence of our lightsabers.

We were only a short way away from the cavern that we were seeking when a horde of mynocks came flying out at us. We swung our lightsabers and cut them down as they flocked around us and tried to latch onto us. It was a moment of the utmost tension, but when it was over, and we were ankle-deep in mynock bodies and guano, we couldn't help but laugh to each other as we realised where we were. It didn't help that every step squished with silicon-based fecal matter. It had a smell like fossil fuels and felt like sandy muck with every step we took, almost as though it was a bog-planet we had suddenly come into.

Then came the screams of the kinrath.

I'll never forget what it looked like to see their arachnid forms skittering across the rock walls and ceiling, coming at us from every angle. We readied our lightsabers and waited for them to come to us; and when they did, it was from every angle. They dropped from the ceilings and they sprung from the walls, they advanced across the ground and were not as impeded by the guano as we were. The humming of lightsabers filled the air, as did the pained screeches of these creatures as they were driven inexorably on by some impulse to action that bereaved them of any sense of self-preservation, as though they thought we were attacking their hive, and their queen forced them ever onward.

We advanced despite the onslaught, and eventually we came upon the cave we were seeking. It was illuminated brilliantly with lights of all sorts, some of which had neither name nor description in Galactic Basic. These were khyber crystals of all descriptions there, save one. There were no red crystals. I found that curious, and made a note to ask Master Kreia about the reason for that later.

Against a pillar, there was one crystal formation that drew me to it like a moth to a flame. It was bright, viridian green, and I came up to it, kneeling in the dirt and touching the crystal. The crystal broke away, and a focusing crystal came off of it. It immediately turned grey, but it began to darken in my hands. I secreted it away in my tunic, afraid of what that meant. Turning to Meetra, I looked as she selected a khyber crystal of her own, one that shone like burnished silver, and had a sudden vision of her with a silver-bladed lightsaber of her own, whirring as her armoured form cut through swaths of dark figures with a fierce and haggard expression on her beautiful face.

"This was a magnificent find, Kylo, but we'd best be getting back," said Alek, looking around with trepidation.

"Yes," I replied softly. "I have what I came for. Meetra, are you okay to return?"

"Huh? Oh, right. Yes," she said distractedly, gathering up her silver colour crystal and moving to the cave mouth along with the rest of us. We exited the room, backtracking through the corridor and the guano, and ended up at the mouth of the cavern, a great many blasters trained on us. Blasters held by a number of very terse looking pirates.

* * *

_In those days, piracy was rare save along the Outer Rim, and even along there, the Golden Age of Piracy was long past, or perhaps, still had yet to come. Time will tell. All the same, Dantooine was largely unpoliced. Not especially strange considering the state of most Jedi worlds, but by the same token, it reinforced my belief in the providence of the Force that I was not detained on my long journey to the scarred biome on the other side of the planet. All the same, it was strange to be detained like this. We were put in binders, gagged, and blindfolded, our speeder bikes left behind as their speeders brought us away to an undisclosed location._

_If friendships are secured with shared secrets, then what came next certainly cemented the friendship between myself, Alek and Meetra… _

* * *

I can only guess at what the Jedi Masters were doing as we were in captivity. I knew that the pirates, however, were looking to take us offworld to sell us off at Nar Shaddaa or some other Hutt-owned hellhole. That was the way of these things, that Vitiate's Sith Empire paid a premium to have Jedi sent directly to him so that they could be turned to the Dark Side, and become model Sith. But at the time, I didn't know who was paying for the Jedi to be abducted; simply that it was always someone.

They were waiting on repairs for their ship when we were thrown to the ground like so many sacks of grain, and I could hear Alek and Meetra next to me. I fumbled around for some way to get out, to get free, but they had taken my lightsaber—the green one—and placed it some distance away so that I could neither sense it nor grasp it with my fledgeling mastery of the Force.

It took some time for them to grow lax and jovial, and it was late into the night, when they lay sleeping and the guards were drinking on their rounds—pirates were never particularly disciplined—when I called out to Meetra through the Force, tentatively at first. _Meetra… Lightsaber…_

_No… _she sent back. In retrospect, that was probably when she got confirmation as to how I felt about her. It was Vitiate who taught me to guard myself when communicating with another through the Force, not Kreia, so I can only imagine what I revealed to her in those moments as my mind brushed against hers.

I cursed to myself, knowing that if Meetra's lightsaber was taken, then Alek's most certainly was as well. He was a big man, after all, and if anyone could do damage with a lightsaber, it would be him. All the same, it seemed as though they took some precautions, though it wasn't enough. The Force was not as much of a known quantity back then, so they didn't know that they had to prepare for that, the inadequacy of most preparations that take the Force into account aside.

The binders, however, were on our arms and did not impede the dexterity of our fingers overmuch, and so I immediately took a deep breath and settled into planning our escape. I focused on the violet lightsaber inside my tunic, and brought it forth into my hands, flipping end over end out of my clothes and down my arms to land into my hand. I ignited my lightsaber, and with that, I ascended from where I was and began to let the Force guide me towards Meetra and Alek, slicing through their bindings and gathering up our effects. With a careful precision, I cut away Meetra's and Alek's binders, and they with their lightsabers managed to slice through my own binders. Taking their speeders, we settled into silent running and managed to slip away relatively unnoticed. I can only imagine their faces when they awoke surrounded by Enclave guardians and Republic soldiers.

Alek rounded on me when we were safely away. "You have a _second_ lightsaber?!"

"Yes, I happen to practise Jar'Kai variants of my lightsaber forms. What of it?" I asked.

"Alek…" Meetra began.

Alek raised his hand. "And yet you used that second lightsaber to save not just your own life, but mine and Meetra's as well. I owe you a debt, Kylo. And in recognition of that, I will keep your secret. I know not why you wish for it to remain a secret, but I will keep it all the same."

"Thank you, Alek," said I, stepping forth and taking his arm in mine. "I appreciate it."

"But from now on, you're my responsibility," he said, raising a hand and waggling a finger. "No more rule-breaking without me there to keep you out of trouble."

"That goes double for me," said Meetra, grinning so fervently that my heart skipped a beat. It was in that moment that, looking at her, I knew that I loved her, and that I would love her then and thereafter, and forevermore.

* * *

It was at that moment that Bastila's shuttle began to rock out of hyperspace, and she looked up from the holocron's tale to go to the front of the ship. There was no Sith presence there, somehow, despite it being nominally Revan's capital. She noticed that she no longer tried to deceive herself. Kylo Wren as he had been related in Revan's story was so fundamentally different from the Darth Revan she knew and was growing fond of. Or should it be _Lord _Revan now, considering that she was now at least nominally his apprentice? She knew not which it was, but regardless, she had work to do. She got into her seat and began to go through certain checks to ensure that any Sith ships in the area as well as the port authorities did not think of her as being a hostile entity. Though how she, a single Jedi, could be a threat on a planet swarming with Dark Jedi and Sith was beyond her, she still thought it better to be safe than debris scattered across the barren world's desert surface.

She had something show up on her sensors, and indeed, her communications system, rudimentary though it might have been, was being pinged. She engaged it, and it showed what looked to be a Lord Revan well on the mend. Well, certainly further along than he had been when he had ripped through the Jedi Enclave on Dantooine, that was for certain.

"Ah, Bastila. You're a sight for sore eyes," he said with a fondness in his voice. "I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to do something a mite…troublesome."

"Anything you wish, Lord Revan," she answered with an inclining of her head.

He chuckled. "Already the eager apprentice, I see. But not the understanding one. Don't worry, you'll learn to understand soon enough. On the surface of Korriban there is a settlement. Its name is Dreshdae, and it is very close in proximity to the Sith Academy here. Like a certain True Sith on the Dark Council on Dromund Kaas, however, I appreciate the value of tradition. Now, unlike him, I do not believe that without tradition, we are nothing, but that's really neither here nor there. The point is that it is traditional for all Sith to go through a Sith Academy, whether it be here on Korriban, the one on Dromund Kaas, or the Trayus Academy on Malachor V, and since the latter two are not open to us, it falls to this one to serve its purpose. I hope you'll forgive me, as I had to make a quick stop on Ziost to procure some resources for your training, but I'm here now, and I would like you to learn the fundamentals of Sith philosophy and prove yourself to my underlings. If they are to follow you, they must respect you, and if they are to respect you, you must at least have the facade of legitimacy in their eyes."

Bastila nodded. That made sense enough. Though she was perplexed. "What will they teach me that you cannot?"

"Nothing, save that I have not the inclination to teach a neophyte how to turn their khyber crystal red. Those don't occur naturally, you know. There's a ritual to it, a ritual of Sith Alchemy. There is much you must unlearn from your time amongst the Jedi, and this is the most expedient way to do it. But remember, no matter how much they might have to impart to you, I am your Master, and so the final say on the teachings you are to follow remains with me. Pride goeth before the fall and all that," said Lord Revan seriously.

"Of course, my lord," she said, slightly offended that he thought she needed a reminder of how dangerous the Dark Side was before realising that she was very much in enemy territory right now as far as the rest of the Sith Empire was concerned.

"Wonderful. Though the person you'll want to talk to in order to get into the Sith Academy is a woman known as Yuthura Ban, the headmaster is Uthar Wynn, and though he is loyal to Malak, he is a competent and fair instructor. Learn well at his feet. Then come seek me out in the Tomb of Naga Sadow, and we will continue your training. Pay special attention to Uthar's face. It will be of significance in due time. Each test you undergo will bring you closer and closer to your potential as a Sith," remarked Lord Revan. "You have your instructions. Go forth and act upon them."

"Revan—!"

"Ending transmission."

Mind buzzing with questions, Bastila all the same sighed and began to go through the procedures to land at Dreshdae. She piloted the shuttle through, and the fact that someone had thought to list this shuttle as stolen, she thought, was the reason she was able to land it without issue, unmolested, save with the port authority.

When she exited the shuttle, she stepped onto the ground of Korriban and was at once assaulted with the sheer magnitude of the Dark Side Force energy present on the planet's surface. It nearly made her buckle under the enormity of its weight. She chastised herself for not expecting it, but it made her wonder how anything could live here at all. All the same, she stood before she lost face and continued on to the port authority.

"Go on through," said the Twi'lek there in Galactic Basic.

"Don't I have to pay a docking fee?" asked Bastila.

"It's been paid. You _are _Bastila Shan, are you not?"

"I am…" said Bastila.

"A Sith in black robes with Mandalorian armour told us to expect you," said the man. "Said his name was Kylo Ren…?"

"Of course he did," sighed Bastila, rushing past and going through into the settlement of Dreshdae, the only town on the planet, though it was largely ancillary, as the only place worth entering on the planet was the Sith Academy—given the lack of arable land on Korriban, this was how they got food and water onto the planet, through Dreshdae's spaceport. "Could you direct me to Yuthura Ban, then?"

The man visibly recoiled. "Um… She should be in the cantina, but don't tell her I sent you! Please, it will be the death of me!"

"Don't worry, I won't tell her," said Bastila, walking away from the man and walking towards the sound of music that she thought for certain would be the cantina. Surely it was the will of the Force that she find it, because the music was indeed coming from the cantina itself. There were Sith trainees abusing aspirants all over the place, probably for fun or to work off their insecurities, but Bastila made no move to stop any of them. It was not her business, and while she never did like taking advantage of people just because, she didn't go out of her way to help those in need either, which gained her some degree of enmity from her more altruistic colleagues, in her earlier days in the Jedi Order, back when she was still a Jedi.

Once she got into the cantina, she looked around, and then realised that she had no idea what Yuthura Ban looked like. While annoying, this wasn't a complete and total setback. She closed her eyes and let the Force guide her towards a Twi'lek woman with pale, almost purplish skin, yellow eyes, and elaborate markings up and down her face.

"Hello… Are you Yuthura Ban?"

"Who wants to know?" asked the Twi'lek in response.

"Bastila Shan," replied Bastila.

"The Knight Victorious? Why don't you tell me why I shouldn't kill you right now?" said Yuthura.

"Because I wish to understand," replied Bastila honestly, "What it means to be Sith."

Yuthura Ban smiled then, and it was not a good smile. "Then tell me, Bastila, and it is a question you must answer honestly in order to enter the Sith Academy. Who told you where to find me?"

"I…" said Bastila, remembering the fearful cry of the Twi'lek man who had begged her not to tell the Sith he told Bastila where to find her. Then she sighed. "It was the Twi'lek at the port authority."

Yuthura Ban raised an eyebrow. "And here I thought you were going to lie."

"That wouldn't have been wise of me, would it?"

"No, it would not have been, at that," replied Yuthura, reaching into her pack and pulling forth an elaborate medallion. "Here. This will allow you into and out of the Sith Academy. Just show it to the guard. I will go with you this time so that the guard knows you didn't just kill an acolyte and take it—though if you ask me, any acolyte who lets themselves be cut down and have their medallion stolen from them is not worthy of being Sith in the first place. Still, Uthar runs the show, not me. More's the pity."

She waggled her eyebrows suggestively. Bastila suddenly became aware that she was to participate in a Sith plot to destroy each other. She knew from her research amongst the Jedi that the Sith often plotted against each other to their downfall, but she never would have expected it to be this…_brazen. _Still, it made a certain sense, to implant a sleeper agent amongst the newer students who were not under Uthar's sway.

The Twi'lek rose to her feet gracefully and began to walk away, and Bastila followed behind her. They went directly to the gates of the Sith Academy, and Yuthura stopped in front of the guards. "This woman is a new acolyte in the ways of the Dark Side. She is to be given access second only to myself and Master Wynn. Is that understood?"

"Yes, my lady," the guards responded in unison.

"Good," replied Yuthura, walking into the Sith Academy. "Come along, Acolyte Shan."

"Y-yes, my lady," replied Bastila.

"Ooh, _my lady,_" said Yuthura as she turned around to look at Bastila. "I like how that sounds coming from your lips. Make sure to remember your place and I'm sure we'll get along…_famously._"

Bastila took a step back, and Yuthura merely laughed and continued walking.

The Sith Academy was a massive structure, and it looked as though it went on for ages, with rooms in all directions to accommodate and house an entire civilisation's Dark Side Force users. And in the center, meditating, was a bald man with all the markings of a Sith, save for purplish markings which, like Yuthura, were inscribed onto his flesh.

"Yuthura Ban, you're dismissed," said the man, his eyes snapping open as he stood.

"Yes, Master Wynn," replied Yuthura, bowing at the waist. "I'll be in my quarters when you're done, Bastila."

She then walked out of the room, into the shadows at the far side of the area.

"Now, Bastila Shan, I'm going to have to pull a lot of strings to get you into the higher echelons of acolytes. I expect you to obey," said Uthar Wynn without preamble. "Your career as a Jedi was long and very illustrious. Some of the more ambitious or fervent acolytes are going to try and kill you to ascend in the rankings to gain prestige. It is your job not to allow them to do so. Understood?"

"Yes, Master Wynn," replied Bastila.

"Good. Now, remove the khyber crystal from your lightsaber and hand the rest over to me. When you—and only you, for I will know if anyone else does it for you—manage to turn the crystal red, you may have the weapon returned to you," commanded Uthar. "Do you know the Sith Code?"

She was about to respond in the negatory, but then remembered Lord Revan telling it to her, what seemed like a lifetime ago. "Peace is a lie; there is only passion. Through passion, I gain strength. Through strength, I gain power. Through power, I gain victory. Through victory, our chains are broken. The Force shall set me free."

Uthar looked genuinely shocked. "Impressive. That knowledge alone has gained you some considerable prestige. It seems we may skip the first month of training, then, since you know the Code."

Bastila preened as she was commended for her knowledge. The Jedi would never have expressed such positive reinforcement.

"Report to Yuthura Ban. She will grant you the robes of our order. Your Jedi garb would be an affront to many here, and should you keep it, will cause you to be in great danger. It is for your own safety that we mandate this."

"Yes, Master Wynn," said Bastila. She bowed at the waist and went after Yuthura Ban, for once excited to learn once more.

* * *

As it turned out, holding a vibrosword to a merchant's neck was an easy way of negotiating. Ithorians tended to be very fond of living, after all.

"Only I can unlock him! I've got a restraining bolt on his central processor!"

It didn't help his cause that he pissed her off with lines like that one.

The "protocol" droid stood deactivated in the back of the shop, dusty and ill-cared-for despite the ingenuity she could see gleaming in every centimetre of his design. The merging of Sith, Je'daii and Mandalorian design philosophies and components made her certain that this was K… _Revan's _handiwork, no doubt about it.

"You have no right to gaze upon that droid, let alone profess to own and sell it," said Meetra tersely. "What is the code?"

"I'm not going to tell you!" he said stubbornly.

"You already have," said Meetra before thrusting the vibrosword through his neck and out the back of his spinal column. He gurgled on blood before collapsing to the sandy floor in a heap.

"Now then, let's see what you're about," she said as she walked over to the droid, picking up a few tools from around the droid shop and beginning to work at him.

He was damaged, that much a blind woman could tell. The extent of the damage, however, was horrifying. This Ithorian had done such a hack job in disabling him that the issues were far more extensive than she had feared they might be. Tinkering with the assassination protocols, she upgraded the central neural processor and rerouted auxiliary power, doing as much as she could to bring him to his former glory. She had only heard hearsay about this droid, and seen him in Force visions from her beloved, and she knew how even when Alek abandoned Revan, this droid remained his stalwart companion.

Finally, judging her job to be just about done, she undid the restraining bolt, thanking the Force that the Ithorian had neither the know-how nor the resources to set up even a rudimentary biometric reader, and then activated him.

"Powering up," came the droid's voice, hoarse and sand-clogged as his vocabulator was, and then Meetra stood and walked around him to look upon him.

"Register me as your new master," ordered Meetra.

"Registration: current master. Biometric signature imprinted. Error. Biometric signature matches records of one 'Meetra Surik.' Status: deceased."

"News of my death was greatly exaggerated," she said, spreading her palms out as though to explain.

"Observation: That boorish Ithorian is deceased. Updating master logs. Greeting: Hello, Master."

"Hello, HK-47," replied Meetra. She walked over to the counter and opened up the hold-out armoury, bringing forth a heavy blaster rifle. She tossed it to HK and said, "Catch."

"Announcement: Catching!" said HK-47, snatching the rifle out of the air.

Meetra smiled and kicked open the door. The smell of blood and flesh-stripping sand was almost overpowering, but Meetra didn't seem to notice. HK-47 looked around and said, "Compliment: Impressive carnage, Master."

"It is, isn't it?" she said, complimenting herself. She looked around and saw the amount of people she had butchered wholesale, and was disappointed only that it had taken so long. It would have taken a fraction of the time if she had had her lightsaber. "Regardless, let's be on. I stole a local smuggler's ship, so that should be enough to get us off-planet."

"Excited remark: It is going to be such a pleasure travelling with you, Master."

"_I _think so, too," replied Meetra.

Moments later, a modified freighter began liftoff from the Anchorage starport, and began shooting into the sky. Anchorage was left behind, the winds howling through empty streets littered with the bodies of the dead and the dying, blood flowing in rivers down the sandy bedrock, too much of it for the sand to absorb or the twin suns to evaporate quickly. When a Tusken Raider party would venture forth from their enclave, they would find only death, and decry the place in their own strange way as being cursed.

When Czerka damage assessment teams came forth some time later, they suspected some sort of crowd-controlling contagion, and as such, relations tensed between them and Darth Malak's Sith Empire, not because they thought the Republic morally incapable of such a feat of savagery and barbarism—far from it, as it was well within the Republic modus operandi to authorise such a thing as a false flag operation—but rather that only the Sith had the resources to create and synthesise such a contagion.

News reached the Republic of this quickly once Czerka made their reports to their executives, and panic quickly spread across the ecumenopoli of the Core Worlds as they came to the conclusion that if such a contagion existed, it would have ever more devastating effects on them and their planets. This lead to an escalation of the war effort against the Sith Empire, the rise of this phantom menace that threatened to destroy the galaxy in a wash of savagery and carnage, and would lead to far more blood being spilt in the days and years and decades to come. A do-or-die resistance strategy was adopted then, as Malak's alleged inhumanity was laid bare, and many millions of Republic citizens answered the call.

Meetra Surik watched this all with a morbid fascination, peering forward into the Force to find all of this in her foresight; Visas was very gifted in the Force and as such, her ability to cut through the mist of the Dark Side was augmented greatly. Turning away from this as she rose to walk to the cockpit, she set a course for Telos IV.

She would regain all that was lost to her. First her lightsaber, and then her beloved.

* * *

Far away from Tatooine, in the Tomb of Naga Sadow, Darth Revan was meditating in the chamber of the Star Map. Stocked with the Dark Side to sustain him, as well as food for those who knew to find it, with a plethora of enemies to keep his skills sharp, he rested as a Jedi would, peering into the future through the fog he had become accustomed to.

Suddenly, he felt a ripple in the Force, a disturbance, like hundreds of people had died at once, a domino set in motion down a line of such things, a cascading reaction that would cause billions of untold deaths. Unknown to him, he had seen much the same as what Meetra had seen, and further forwards he peered, but could not, for there was a nexus of possibility extending outward, billions more than he had originally seen.

Alarmed, Revan's eyes snapped open, and his gaze moved to the Dejarik board. Three sides were set up: his, Malak's, and Vitiate's. It was then that Revan moved towards the board and began to program another set, for there seemed to be a fourth player in their little game, an unknown, a wild card in their deadly contest.

Revan very much looked forward to meeting them.


End file.
